VASA ew 
AX . 


ANS . 
~ 
SS SY \ 


Ss 
\ AAG 
YS RRA ~ 

‘ AN \ \. \ 
A RRQ Ww 


\\ SN ‘ 
AY 


fe RA hey 


OO Ore JC ales S Ca Naha ye 
PRINCETON, N. J. 


Case 
Shelf 
Bool: 


i. 
Py Pi ee 
<n me 

be | nt the 


7) ee 4} fe 
aicdved nha 
ee . 7 SUAS a yy 
oa 5 ris @ 


eal 


+ Sapa a 


i 


i ip saeetitesey A em alae 


, 


¥; 
i 


ab 
ad 


PHILOSOPHY 


OF 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE: 


A CONTRIBUTION 


TO 


THEOLOGICAL PROGRESS AND REFORM 


BY 


f 


e Y 
eB Wes Acree tes AS be 


RUTLAND, VT. 


NEW YORK: 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, 


FourTH AVE. AND 23D St. 


1875. 


COPYRIGHT, 


A SG Pee oe 


DE DT GAT LON. 


© ¢—___— 


TO MY OLD ASSOCIATES IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY, 
AND IN THE LABORS OF THE CHRISTIAN 
MINISTRY, THIS LITTLE WORK, THE FIRST- 
FRUITS OF THE TOIL OF YEARS OF 
PHYSICAL PROSTRATION AND EN- 

_ FORCED: RETIREMENT AND. SE- 
° CLUSION, IS RESPECTFULLY 
AND AFFECTIONATELY 


DEDICATED. 


If acquiescence without insight; if warmth without light; if an 
immunity from doubt given and guaranteed by a resolute ignorance ; 
if the habit of taking for granted the words of a catechism, remem- 
bered or forgotten ; if a mere sensation of positiveness substituted— 
I will not say for the sense of certainty, but for that calm assurance 
the very means and conditions of which it supersedes ; if a belief 
that seeks the darkness and yet strikes no root, immovable as the 
limpet from the rock, and like the limpet fixed there by the mere 
force of adhesion ;—if these suffice to make men Christians, in what 
sense could the Apostle affirm that believers receive: not indeed 
worldly wisdom, that comes to nought, but the wisdem of God, that 
we might know and comprehend the things that are freely given us of 
God. On what grounds could he denounce the sincerest fervor of’ 
spirit as defective where it does not likewise bring forth fruits in the 


understanding.—COLERIDGE. 


The capital precept for the whole undertaking is this, that the eye 
of the mind be never taken off from things themselves, but receive 
their images truly as they are. And God forbid that ever we should 
offer the dreams of fancy for a model of the world ; but rather in his 
kindness vouchsafe to us the means of writing a revelation and true 
vision of the traces and moulds of the Creator in his creatures.— 
BACON. 


EEG HB ACO A 


Tue term ‘Trinitarian, in the title of this 
work, is intended, not to imply adiscussion of 
the doctrine of the Trinity exclusively, but 
rather to indicate the point of view from which 
the topics here presented, and indeed the whole 
circle of Christian doctrine, have been contem- 
plated by the writer. He was originally led into 
the train of meditation, some fruits of which are 
now submitted, by a desire and effort to learn 
by inquiry of the Scriptures themselves what 
is the purely Scriptural doctrine of the Trin- 
ity. The view which there unfolded itself to 
him of the person of Christ and His rela- 
tion to the Father and to Humanity, not 
only appeared intelligible and consistent with 
itself, in marked contrast to those which 
the current theological standards afforded, 
but also became, with increasing study, 


more and more evident as the central parent 


ei PREFACE. 

luminary of the whole system of theological 
truth, the life-principle out of which it all grows, 
as the branches out of the Vine; as “all the build- 
ing, fitly framed together, groweth into an holy 
temple in the Lord” out of “ Jesus Christ Him- 
self the chief corner stone.”’ Divine philosophy, 
as thus revealed, is indeed something manifestly 
different from the formularies commonly accept- 
ed as orthodox; but the writer trusts that it 
will appear to some other minds, as it does to 
his own, thoroughly in harmony with the one 
Catholic faith which the constructors of those 
formularies aimed to crystallize in shapes of log- 
ic, with how imperfect success, the holiest and 
wisest of them have been readiest to acknow- 
ledge. Of course the contents of this little 
work constitutes no more than a mere be- 
ginning, and comes very far short of cover- 
ing the whole of the ground indicated by the 
title. In fact my own studies and labors have 
taken a much wider range and include a much 
larger outline and a much fuller and more sys- 
tematic treatment than appears or is even in- 
dicated in this volume. They include such 


PREFACE. vii 


leading topics as the following, which, to atone 
in some measure for the extremely incomplete 
and fragmentary character of this publication, 
may be briefly indicated : 

General conception of “the creation as an 
organic Unity, and of the organic relation exist- 
ing between God and the universe according 
to Aristotle, and in fact the clearly taught phi- 
losaphy of the Scriptures themselves ; the 
Godhead itself an organic Unity within itself ; 
distinction of rank and power—of greater and 
less—of the universal and the particular among 
its elements essential to the existence of any 
such thing as an organic Unity or a Trinity 
comprehended within it ; the idea of the Trin- 
ity unfolded and the doctrine stated; the na- 
ture and person of Christ. 

The relation which Christ sustains to men in 
the manhood analogous to and explained by 
the relation which the Father sustains to the 
Son in the Godhead; the principle of the 
power and perpetuity of Christianity found in 
the example of Christ as God manifest in the 
flesh; Christ as our atonement; the office 


hn PREFACE, 


work of the Holy Spirit, as illustrated by Scrip- 
ture and by natural and Platonic symbols and 
analogies ; the doctrine of original sin—sin an 
altogether inorganic and individual affair in op- 
position to’the Augustinian theory of the or- 
ganic unity of the race in sin ; the organic unity 
of mind in the universe, including the Eternal 
mind as the principle of unity ; the source and 
foundation of law and of ethics; ante-Nicene 
history of the doctrine of the Trinity, showing 
the prevalence of the subordination theory 
among the early Greek fathers : intellectual 
life, freedom, and progress, as affected by the 
Nicene Council ; the doctrine of the Trinity, as 
illustrated and taught by analogies from Plato 
and from nature; miracles; faith, and reason ; 
the trinity of principles in the constitution and 
life of the soul, and in the life of the church— 
a lively image of the Trinity of persons in the 
Godhead. Azd now abideth Faith, Hope, Char- 
ity, these three; but the greatest of these ts Char- 
ty. Land my Lather are one, but my Father ts 
greater than I. ‘Vhe ideal state of Plato and the 
Christian church of Paul compared. A. G. P. 


RUTLAND,’ Dec. 8, 1874. 


CONTENTS. 


I, THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS NECESSITY OF THE ORGANIC 
CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD AND OF THE DEITY. 


The failure to recognize the organic unity of the Godhead a fruitful 
source of mischief in Theology, 1—No such thing as a science of the 
Unique, 2—The tree known by its fruits, the cause by its effects, 6 
—All life dualistic, 7—The Trinity, 8—The attributes of the Father 
known only through those of the Son, r4—The attributes of the Son 
through those of the Church, which is his body, 16—Spinoza, consub- 
stantiality, or common nature of cause and effect throughout the or- 
ganic Universe, 18—The similitude of the Vine and its branches, I9 
—Relation of cause and effect in the realm of the Mechanical, 22 
—Paul’s Address to the Athenians, 23—Organic relation between 
Nature and God (John xvii. 21), 24—The Philosophy that is 
needed, 27—-The organic Unity of the Godhead within itself, 27— 
Difference of Nature between God and Man, 28—The mediatorial 
nature of Christ the foundation of his mediatorial work, 30—Athana- 
sian view of the subject, 33. 


s 


II. CHRIST THE PRINCIPLE OF OUR IMMORTALITY. 


The prevailing doctrine respecting the immortality of the soul, 37— 
Effect of the light of the Gospel in changing Pagan ideas—Justin 
Martyr, 383—New Testament view of the subject, 4o—AZ// life or- 
ganic, 41—The similitude of the Vine and its branches, 42—The 
life of the members dependent on that of the body—the life of the 
body on that of its Head, 47—-Universal application of the princi- 
ple, 48—Scope and limitations of Free Will within the realm of 
freedom—Death the inevitable consequence of separation from the 


“ CONTENTS. 


source of life, 50--This follows not from the principles of retribu- 
tive justice, except as those principles are identical with the organic 
Structure of the Universe and the eternal and unchangeable na- 
ture of things, not so much because God so wills, as because the 
universe is so constructed that soit must needs be, 53——Coleridge, 
56. : 


III. ACTUAL PERSONAL RELATIONS BETWEEN THE FATHER AND THE 
SON, AND SUBORDINATION IN RANK OF THE SON TO THE FATHER, 
(THE SON EQUALLY WITH THE FATHER WITHIN THE UNITY OF 
THE GODHEAD BUT NOT EQUAL WITH HIM IN IT) AS SET FORTH 
IN EXPRESS TERMS BY CHRIST HIMSELF. 


An exposition of John v. 8-20, 58—Christ’s treatment of the personal 
relations between him and his Father as not only real but practicable 
and intelligible, 53—-The healing of the impotent man and bidding 
him to take up his bed and walk on the Sabbath-day, 60-—The Jew- 
ish Sabbath to be distinguished from the Lord’s day, 63—He ex- 
plains to the Jews in what sense he does, and in what he does 
not, claim equality with his Father, 67—Comparison of the view 
of the Doctrine as thus set forth, with the prevailing orthodox stand- 
ards, 73—Consistency of John x. 30 and xiv. 28 made apparent, 
76—Cudworth’s Platonic Christian’s Apology, arich deposit of 
Ante-Nicene thought and opinion on the subject of the relation of 
the Father and the Son in the Godhead—The eternal generation 
of the Son—Just where the Arian error lay—Whence the modern 
doctrine of the co-equality of the persons—-Not contained in the term 
Homo onsion, nor held by Athanasius, 77. 


IV. ‘TITLES, PERSONAL AND SUBSTANTIVE, IN WHICH NAME AND Na- 
TURE ARE IDENTICAL: 


THE SON OF MAN AND THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 


Experimental and practical ideas of God alone valid or valuable, 79 
—These titles of special importance, because intended to instruct 
us in regard to his own nature and that of his work, 80—Surpris- 
ing that they should have received so little attention, 81—The first 


CONTENTS. oa 


of frequent and indiscriminate use throughout the four gospels, 82— 
In the most general sense of the term based upon the organic con- 
ception of the universe and of its relations to God, 83—This con- 
ception not unfamiliar to Plato and Aristotle, 83—Sum total of 
the light which Theology has thus far cast upon the subject, 85— 
False philosophy respecting race and species—a baseless and life- 
less Nominalism—T he principal source of the darkness and the diffi- 
culty, 86—Disastrous influence of the Nicene Council on intellec- 
tual freedom and progress, 87—Strange inconsistency of Athanasius 
in holding to the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son in the 
Godhead, and denying that of the Son of Man and humanity in 
the Human order, 87—Creation not sporadic but organic, 87— 
Union of the universal and particular in every individual of a 
species, 87—Realism of Plato, 89—Christ the principle of our 
Humanity, 94—Analysis of the title: The Son of Man, too— 
Origin of the phrase, 1o2—The goal. of thought, 107—Ground of 
the universal and instinctive faith of the Church in.the Divinity of 
-her Head, 1o9— Mutual knowledge and affection between individ- 
uals implying consubstantiality of nature, rr1—The Good Shepherd 
—a special designation designed to instruct us in regard to his 
work, including the Son of man within its signification, r12—Con- 
substantiality of nature between Christ and his people, illustrated 
by that between the Father and the Son, 115—The nature of the 
trust, which Christ as the Good Shepherd has to administer towards 
his sheep, 118—An element of wrath and of judgment entering 
into the function of the Good Shepherd, 121—Logical and gram- 
matical analysis of the phrase, 127—Guarantees inherent in his 
nature for absolute purity and disinterestedness in the adminis- 
tration of his trust, 134—Organic unity of the Good Shepherd 
and his flock, 139—The universality of his nature as the Son 
of man fitting him for the discharge of the office of Universal 
Shepherd of Humanity, 140—The individualizing tendency 
in human nature carried to excess and bringing the Soul into 
bondage to self-—-The principle of Original Sin, 142—Christ’s love 
for little children, 143—-Wordsworth’s immortal Ode, 145—The true 
sense of the Apostle Paul, Rom. vy. 12, 14—Coleridge’s interpretation 
of Genesis first and second, r48—Christ in the execution of his office 
of the Good Shepherd must address himself to that which is simplest 
and most universal in the constitution of our souls, 150-—The office 


xii CONTENT'S. 


of the Good Shepherd an office of good to those only who are po- 
tentially good, or have a principle of good within them, 151—The 
nature and necessity of the New Birth, 153—The heart the organ 
of vision in spiritual things, 154— The infidel theory of the religious 
element, 155—The Christian theory, 156—The true point of view in 
regard to Spiritual things, 157—Strong confirmation I John iv. 7, 8, 
158—All the Divine attributes comprehended in love, 160—The 
office of the Good Shepherd unigue in its character, 169—Christ as 
the Universal Shepherd of Humanity becomes also our Great High 
Priest by making himself the one alJ-sufficient and life-giving Sacri-. 
fice for our souls, 170—The office of Christ as the Good Shepherd 
becomes effectual—-The power of God unto Salvation unto every one 
that believeth when it merges and culminates in yes of our Great 
High Priest, 172—Guarantees or “ better uaa * upon which the 
hopes of the believer rest, 173. 


V. THE GIST OF THE CONTROVERSY: OR, A PLAIN WORD WITH PROF. 
TYNDALL ON THE QUESTION OF THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 


The question stated on the part of Science, 175—On the part of Re- 
ligion, 177—The case as put by the Apostle John, 180—Analysis of 
the principle of Love, 181—Summing up, 183. 


te (GAG PSO 23a EN 


or 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 


lle 


Lhe philosophical and religious necessity of the or- 
ganic conception of the world and of the Deity, 


THE failure to recognize the organic unity of the 
Godhead, and the regarding it instead as an abstract 
unity, has been the fruitful source of error and mis- 
chief in theology, and many a fatal stumbling-block 
has been thrown in the way of a rational faith in 
Christianity by means of it. The truth is, that God 
cannot be known at all, or be a real object of knowl- 
edge or of thought to any mind, except by means 
of his organic nature and connections with the uni- 
verse. If he has no organic connections; if he is to 
be regarded as absolutely one and simple—without 
any organic relation of parts or elements. within 

2 


Z PLILOSCPILY UL: 


himself, or any organic relations with anything out- 
side of himself—then there are no means by which 
he can be known at all. By the very supposition 
he has no attributes, he is a subject without prop- 
erties—a thing, therefore, that cannot be known, 
simply because it has no real objective existence, 
but is a mere form of thought, a mere abstract con- 
ception without any corresponding reality in nature. 
Aristotle says, there can be no.such thing as a sclence 
of the unique. By the unique, he means that which 
‘is absolutely one and simple in itself, and destitute 
of all organic connection with anything outside of 
itself. . It is obvious that that which is within itself 
thus inorganic—not a unity but a mere unit of ab- 
straction—-can have no external connections or 
means of connecting itself with external things 
either as cause or effect, either as antecedent or con- 
sequent. . 
* Of course, there can be no science of any such 
thing, for it has no contents and no attributes, and 
is therefore, objectively speaking, a nonentity. It 
is merely a conception of the mind, not correspond- 
ing to anything objectively real, but standing only 
as the subjective opposite to reality. If God is 
unique, that is, absolutely one and simple in his 
nature, then he has no attributes ; and if he has no 


attributes he is objectively nothing. He has no 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 3 
connections with things outside of himself by means 
of which he can be known, no means by which he 
can reveal himself to us. Even if he were supposed 
to have a reality, an actual nature of his own, he 
must have known attributes, or else he cannot reveal 
himself. The revelation cannot be direct and im- 
mediate. The subject can be known only by means 
of its known properties. The cause only by means 
of the effects which it produces. If known at all, 
it must be through the medium of some result 
flowing from it, or effect which it produces. We 
can know nothing of causes but from their effects. 
The reality of the cause is inferred from the reality 
of its effects and the nature of the cause from the 
nature of the effects. But if a cause has no organic 
connections with things outside of itself, it can pro- 
duce no effects upon those things—there is no 
way by which it can act upon things with which 
it has no connection. We can be directly conscious 
only of ourselves—of the operations of our own 
minds, or of effects and impressions made upon 
our minds. If we are to have consciousness of 
God therefore, it must be through the medium 
of our self-consciousness, or through the medium 
of impressions of which we are conscious, and 
which we find ourselves obliged to refer to him as 


their source. But God cannot in this way enter 


4 PHILOSOPHY «OF 


into our consciousness unléss there exist organic 
connections between his mind and ours. How can 
the mind of God enter into our minds, and we, 
through the consciousness of our minds, know his 
mind, unless there is an organic connection between 
his mind and ours? If we are to know his mind 
at all, it must be as it makes itself known to us 
in our minds. God reveals himself ¢o us, that is, 
makes known to us his being and his attributes only 
as he reveals himself in us and ¢hrough us. But in 
order that he may reveal himself through us, he 
must himself be zz us. But this he can be only 
vitally and organically. There is no way by which 
he can be said to be in us, except by means of his 
life. Only that which is itself life can enter into life. 
Only lives and living forces can inter-penetrate each 
other and dwell within each other, thus forming an 
organic unity of life within life, mind within mind. 
If mind were not living it could not enter into mind, 
and form by their mutual indwelling and inter-pene- 
tration an organic unity of mind. His mind cannot 
be organically one with our minds, except by being 
the mind of our minds—or the universal principle 
of mind within our particular minds, by means of 
which the real nature and life of mind is imparted 
to our minds, and we become rational and living 


souls. We can have one life with God only as his 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 5 


life becomes the life of our lives. If he is not far 
from every one of us, it is because he is actually 
within us. By the zot far is not meant.a short dis- 
tance from us in space—a slight remove externally 
from us—but that he is within and not without us 
at all, whether far or near. The /ar relates to that 
which is without—the xear to that which is within. 
If in him we live, and move, and have our being, it 
is not mechanically nor figuratively, but vitally and 
organically. I have said that if God has no organic 
conneéctions—is not organically connected with any 
being that is not his own—then he has, properly 
speaking, no attributes. If his mind is a distinct 
and separate individuality, complete in itself, and 
acting separately and independently of anything in 
vital relations with it, then he has no attributes— 
none, at all events, which we have any means of 
knowing anything about, or of forming any concep- 
tion of; but it is only by means of his attributes 
that we can have any knowledge of him. The at- 
tributes of a cause are the same thing to us as its 
nature. They are to us the expression of its nature, 
or the particular aspects and qualities by which it 
makes itself known to us. As, for example, good, 
wise, just, great, and their contraries. A moral and 
inteilectual cause of which none of these can be 


predicated, has for us no nature or character, and if 


- 6 PITELOSOPAY SOL 


without nature, or intellectual or moral qualities, it 
is nothing to us. The attributes or qualities of a 


cause, whether physical or moral, are known only 


by the nature of the effects which it produces. Its 


nature as a cause—that is, the kind of cause or be- 
ing it is—can be known only by the kind of effects 
which it produces. 

A good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and an evil 
tree evil fruit, the tree is known by its fruit. 

If the effects of which we are conscious within 
ourselves, or which come within our observation 
or experience, whether within us or without us, 
whether intellectual and moral or external and 
physical, and which by the necessary laws of thought 
we ascribe to God as their cause, are what we recog- 
nize as good, then on the ground of these effects, we 
ascribe goodness to God. We say that»none buta 
good being could have produced them. If another 
class of effects which likewise we ascribe to God 
exhibit wisdom, a clear comprehension of ends to be 
gained and the best means of gaining them; if we 


see means adapted to ends in, such a way as to indi- 


cate the profoundest and most consummate and far- — 


seeing wisdom, we cannot avoid having the convic- 
tion fastened upon us by these manifestations, that 
the being who could devise and carry out such a 


system of things, and accomplish such ends by such 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. y 


means, must be endowed with infinite wisdom. This 
we do on the principle that the tree is known by its 
fruit. Again, if we find ourselves so constituted— | 
our inner being so made up—that we instinctively 
take the highest delight in justice, and cannot but 
rejoice and be glad when we see justice done, and 
its ends gained, and its enemies overwhelmed, and if 
we find the universe, so far as we are acquainted 
with it, constructed upon the plan and with the 
evident design of establishing justice, and of having 
its kingdom come, and its will done throughout the 
rational and responsible creation, the conclusion to 
which we are inevitably brought, and which becomes 
as certain to us as the fact of the creation itself, is 
that the author of the universe, and the Father of 
our spirits in whom we and all things live, and 
move, and have our being, is an infinitely just being. 
It is thus through his organic connections, that 
God reveals his nature and his attributes to us. 
A cause that produces no effects—a cause that can- 
not be studied in its effects—a cause whose attri- 
butes are not in reality seen in its effects,—is not a 
cause—and a cause that is not a cause is nothing. 
But every cause that is a cause, lives and moves and 
has its being in its effects, and its effects live and 
move and have their being in it. Thus there is no 


such thing as life or being that is unique, there is 


8 PHILOSOPEA YEO 


none that is not organic; there is none that has not 
in it at the same time the nature, and that does not 
| discharge the double function of cause and effect. 
Thus all life and being are dualistic—there is nothing 
that is unique. There are unities indeed, and in 
fact nothing but unities, but these unities are at the 
same time Dyads. There is not in nature sucha 
thing asa monad. We can think monads; not as 
objective realities, however, but only as their sub- 
jective contraries. Unity in the abstract is a thing 
of the mind—it has nominal and notional reality 
merely. But every real object which we can calla 
unity is concrete, and consists of correlate forces or 
elements in organic relation to each other. 
_ The, unity of the Godhead implies its duality— 
special revelation adds another element and makes 
known to us the Trinity. But in principle, the Dyad 
is a philosophical necessity; and the unity of the 
being of God is not a thing conceivable or possible 
except as involving organic relations within itself 
and organic connections with the universe which 
forms his counterpart. Cause and effect are coun- 
terparts and correlates. The one cannot exist or be 
conceived as an objective reality except as existing 
with the other, and with it forming an organic unity. 
Causes as such never stand in immediate relation 


tous. We know them only through their effects, 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 9 


or through the manner in which we are affected by 
them. Effects as such, are known to us immediately. 
They are the direct and immediate matter of our 
consciousness. We know them in themselves, but 
their causes only in and by means of them. 

Thus we do not a prior? assume the goodness of 
God, and from that reason to the effects which he 
produces, and say, these must be so or so because 
he is such or such. We do not judge of the charac- 
ter of the effects which he produces by what we 
know a prior of his character. We do not point to 
the acknowledged effects, and say these must be 
good because he is good. We do not judge of the 
fruit from the tree, but a@ posteriori of the tree by 
its fruit. 

We do not upon a priorz grounds (if there are any 
such grounds) assume the justice of God, and then 
say that what he does is just because he is just and 
cannot act any other way than justly, and therefore 
whatsoever he does ts just because he does it. That 
would be simply to judge of the just and the unjust 
in character and conduct, without any idea of the 
nature of justice in our minds as our standard or cri- 
terion of judgment. To judge of the nature of 
effects from the assumed nature of their Cause, 
would be to say that effects have no nature or 


character of their own; that justice. is arbitrary, 
2% 


10 PHILOSOPHY OF 


depending upon will and prescription, and that our 
opinion of the justice of an act depends upon 
nothing inherent in the act itself, but upon the opin- 
ion we entertain of the character of him that per- 
forms it. 

We have only (for example) to make the will of a 
despot the standard of right and wrong, and such a 
thing as unjust government, or as oppression and 
cruelty in a ruler, becomes impossible. | 

But taking the nature of our own consciences and 
the instinctive verdict of our moral sense as the 
standard, judging, that is, by the standard of nature 
and conscience within our own souls, and perceiving 
the goodness and righteousness of the effects which 
we refer to him as their cause, we are obliged by the 
necessary laws of thought to infer the goodness 
and justice of the being who produced them. From 
the effects as revealed to us in our own conscious- 
ness, we necessarily infer a cause adequate to their 
production; from the zature of the effects, as judged 
of by our own moral sense, we infer the nature of 
the cause. We do not assume the goodness of the 
tree and thence pronounce upon the nature of the 
fruit which it must bear. We do not say of a given 
species of fruit, this fruit must be good because the 
tree which produced it is a good tree, or of another 


sort, this fruit must be evil—there.is no need of 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE, II 


tasting or trying it in order to determine whether it 
is good or not. That point is already determined a 
priort for us by the nature of the tree, from sources 
independent entirely of any fruit it bears; it has 
been proved to be a good tree; of course being such, 
the fruit which it produces, whatever it may be, as 
judged of by our tastes, or its effects on us, must be 
good. In order to determine the nature of a fruit, 
and determine whether it is good or not, we have 
but one question to ask, and that is, what sort of a 
tree is it which has produced it? Now if we had 
the means (as absolutely we have not) of judging of 
the nature of the tree on grounds wholly independ- 
ent of the fruit it produces, this would be good rea- 
soning. It is true that a tree which is good can 
produce none but good fruit. But what means 
have we of determining the nature of a fruit-tree 
but the nature of the fruit it bears? None, what- 
ever; the tree, then, is to be known by its fruit, and 
not vice versa, and the nature of the fruit is to be 
determined by actual trial and experience of the 
effects resulting, and the pleasure or disgust expe- 
rienced in eating it. : 

The character of the fruit-bearing and tree-pro- 
ducing principle in the tree, can be known only by 
the tree into which it develops itself, and the fruit 


which that tree produces. The character of the 


i PHILOSOPHY OF 


~ 


moving cause can be determined only from the char- 
acter of the final cause. 

If a cause by its working produces only that which 
is evil, we have a right to infer, if it is intelligent, 
that it wrought only for the sake of producing evil. 
If it works intelligently and produces only evil by 
its working, we have a right to impute to it evil 
motives, and that which in working is actuated by 
evil motives, or the end of whose working is evil, is 
an evil cause. Ifa tree bore no fruit, it would have 
no character as a fruit-tree. Indeed, it would not 
be a fruit-tree at all. So, of a cause which produced 
no effects we should have no means of judging at 
all. In fact, it would not bea cause at all, and not 


being a cause, it would be nothing. 


But suppose your so-called cause, or fruit-bearing . 


principle, were strictly and solely a simple and sep- 
arate thing, and had no organic nature or connec- 
tions—in other words, were an abstract and ab- 
solute unit—that is to say, a monad and not a 
dyad—what then? Why, then there could be no 
such thing as its development into a tree or organic 
body, and of course no such thing as its bearing 
fruit, or producing effects. A monad cannot be a 
fruit-bearing nor even a life principle. It cannot be 
developed into anything; as it came from nothing, 


so nothing can ever come from it. It can have no 


ae 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE, 13 


means of making itself known as anything whatever, 
from the simple fact that, as a monad, it is, object- 
ively speaking, zothing whatever. So if the life- 
principle of a tree were a monad, with no organic 
nature or connections whatsoever, if it could not 
develop itself into a tree, having root, trunk, 
branches, and leaves, it would certainly be incapa- 
ble of bearing fruit. If, then, the tree is known by 
its fruit, and if without organic nature and connec- 
tions—if, except as it develops itself into a tree, it is 
impossible that it should bear any fruit, or produce 
any effects at all, then there is no way in which the 
principle of a fruit-bearing tree, orthe nature or fact of 
a cause, can be known but by means of its organic na- 
ture and connections. As the fruit-beaging principle 
of a tree therefore is known only through its organic 
connections, that is, through its connection with the 
parts, members, and organs of the tree into which 
it develops itself, or which it builds up to serve as 
its body, and as a habitation and means of manifest- 
ation for itself—as without reference to its organic 
connections the principle of life in a tree is a thing 
unknowable and inconceivable by us—so, also, is it 
impossible for us to have any conception whatever 
of God, if we insist on conceiving of him as a simple 
individual inorganic existence, without reference to 


the organic relations which he sustains to the uni- 


TAS Ta PIALOSOPAY WOR 


verse. For it is only by means of his relations to 


the universe, as its organic principle and fountain- 


head, that it is possible for us to have any knowledge 
or idea of him at all. And it is only in virtue of his 
relations to the universe as its living cause that he 
has, as a cause, any character, any attributes, any 


nature at all. As it is only by means of its relation 


to its branches, that is, to its organic connections, | 


that it is possible for us to have any knowledge of 
the vine, and as it is only in relation to the nature 
of the branches which it produces that the vine has 
any attributes or character at all, so it is as to God 
and his attributes, and our knowledge of him. There 
is the same necessity of conceiving of him in his 
organic relations, in order that we may know any- 
thing of him or he be anything to us, as there is in 
the case of the vine. 

The being, the life, and the attributes of God the 
Father, the fountain-head and life-principle of the 
Godhead, make themselves known in the person and 
attributes of the Son. Just as the life, nature, and 
attributes of the vine make themselves known in the 
nature and the life of the branches. The life of the 
vine has two correlative and counterpart elements— 


the vine or root-element, and the branch-element. 


Together these two elements constitute the organic ‘ 


unity of the life of the vine as an organic whole. 


ee ee eS ee 


-TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 15 


As such a whole it must be known, and must exist, 
or it cannot be known or exist at all. Inthe branch, | 
the life of the vine is developed—goes forth into act 
and visibility. The attributes and the character of 
the Father are seen in the life of the Son. The life 
of the Father manifests ttself in the life of the Son. 
The life of the Son ts the living product of the in- 
dwelling life of the Father. | 

Just as Christ lives and reveals his character and 
attributes in the life of the church, which is his dody, 
the manifestation and the measure of that life of his 
which filleth all in all, and the lite of the church, is 
the product of the indwelling life of Christ, who is its 
fountain-head. ‘“ As the living Father hath sent me 
and I live by the Father, even so he that eateth me 
even he shall live by me”’ The Son lives by the 
Father just as the church lives by the Son. Whilst 
at the same time the lives of the Father and of the 
Son are not one and the same, but each has a dis- 
tinct and peculiar life of his own; and the church 
and its Head have not a single life in common, but 
each has a life of its own, distinct but not separate, 
from that of the other. The attributes of the Father 
and the Son are not identical any more than their 
lives, whilst at the same time it is only in and by 
means of the Son that the attributes of the Father 


can be revealed. The attributes of the Father may 


16 PHILOSOPHY OF 


be zz those of the Son without thereby becoming 
his. They remain the same, and his own, the same 
as though they were not embodied and expressed 
in another life organically (but not hypostatically) 
one with his. 

The attributes of Christ reveal themselves in his 
body the church; but they do not thereby become 
its attributes, so that he and it having the same 
attributes are one and the same thing. Absolute, 
independent, self-existence is an essential attribute 
of the life of the Father, distinguishing it from-the 
life of the Son, which is not absolutely self-existent, 
but as Christ himself expressly says, J ive by the 
Father! But the Father is “/zveng” in the absolute 
sense, that is, in the sense of living 4y himself and 
not é6y any other. His life flows from nothing, has 
no original, no source, no fountain. Being itself 
ultimate, and the absolute and unoriginated life, it 
becomes the life-principle and fountain-head of the 
life of the Godhead and of the whole creation. The 
Son is indeed the immediate fountain-head of the 
life of the creation—all things were made by him 
and without him was not anything made that was 
made—but the life of the Father is fountain-head to 
that of the Son, and so ultimately and absolutely 
to that of the whole creation. The life of the Son 


is the immediate source of the life of the creation. 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 17 


The life of the Father is in the life of the creation, 
but not immediately, but only in and through the 
life of the Son. The life of the Son mediates 
between that of the Father and that of the creation. 
The life of the Father is not separated from that 
of the universe, but is in it, yet only mediately, 
through the life of the Son, so that the life of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the creation, taken 
together, constitute that grand organic unity of 
life which comprehends all the life there is, and all 
that ever was or ever can be life or being at all. 

Suppose now that instead of this organic unity of 
life constituted by the life of the Godhead, and of 
the creation, the being of God were conceived of as 
a something standing outside and independent of all 
. organic connection with our being. Suppose his 
being and nature to be a thing apart from ours, and 
sustaining only an external and mechanical relation 
to that of the universe, and a thing of which we can 
have no knowledge by means of our own inward life 
and experience. Suppose him to stand entirely 
outside of all possible creaturely experience and 
consciousness, what knowledge is it possible for us 
to have of him? What possible or conceivable 
means have we of knowing anything about him? Is 
it answered that we may know him by means of his 
works? 


833 PIPLOSOLH AOL 


But what means have we of recognizing anything 
as a work of his, or of connecting him with any 
work as its author? Effects do indeed presuppose 
causes, but there is nothing in any natural effect to 
throw any light upon the nature of its cause, except 
as that effect involves in its own nature something 
of the nature of that cause. Spinoza most truth- 
fully and profoundly says, that if two things have 
nothing in common, the one cannot be the cause of 
the other. Vf then the cause be not within the effect, 
there can be nothing in the effect from which we can 
obtain any knowledge of its cause. For example, if 
there is nothing of God of which we can be con- 
scious in our actual experience, then there is nothing 
in our experience to throw any light upon the 
nature or character of the source from which our 
natures sprang. 

The fact is, that we do instinctively and necessarily 
in obedience to the logic of thought refer all that we 
see in nature, and all that is actual and living in our 
own experience or in the universe to a cause 
within, and not external and mechanically or ar- 
bitrarily related to, itself. We do not when follow- 
ing the natural laws of thought go outside of the 
universe to find somewhere within the domain of 
infinite space something to which we may ascribe it 


as its cause. It does not seem to us possible, that 


ITRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 19 


there can be any such separation between the cause 
and the effect—between the fountain and the stream 
that flows from it. Nay, we know that no such sepa- 
rationexists. We know that it belongs to the nature 
of things that stream and fountain should stand in 
immediate relation to each other. That two things 
cannot sustain to each other the relation of stream 
and fountain, if the one is externally separate and 
foreign from the other. And cause in the organic 
creation means, not force acting externally to pro- 
duce its effects, but life and living energy working 
inwardly- and organically. If God were not inter- 
nally and vitally connected with the universe as its 
cause, there would be nothing in it from which we 
could infer anything in regard to his nature or attri- 
butes. 

In the grand and comprehensive similitude of the 
vine and its branches, by which Christ sets forth the 
relation between himself and his people (or his nor- 
mal relations to humanity), he also indicates the rela- 
tion which exists between himself and the universe. 
It is not necessary to confine the illustration to the 
narrower relation which exists between him and the 
souls of regenerate men. We may extend it to the 
whole universe of being, and say, precisely as the 
vine is related to its branches, so is “God related to 


the universe. As Christ, in the special relation to 


20 PHILOSOPT Ye OF 


the souls of his people, is vine; so God in the uni- . 
versal relation and as universal creator is vine to the 
universe. All that we mean to include under the 
term universe, comes, according to the illustration, 
under the general head of branches. And all which 
there is within the universe, which we yet distin- 
guish from the universe, is represented by the term 
vine. Thus the organic unity of God and the uni- 
verse is exactly represented by the similitude of the 
unity of the vine and its branches. If we do not 
(e. g.) look outside of a tree for the source of the 
branches, if the invariable and universal instinct of 
thought teaches’ us to look zuzszde of a tree for the 
source of its branches, so the natural logic of our 
minds teaches us that the principle of the life and 
the unity of the universe must be within the universe 
and not somewhere or somehow outside of it. We 
do not, under the leading of the instinctive tenden- 
cies of our minds, go about seeking outside of the 
creation for the creator, outside of ‘the things that 
are made”’ for the power that made them. 

Nothing but the creation indeed, can lead us to 
the knowledge of its author. It does lead us to such 
knowledge; and the whole end for which it exists is 
to lead to it, but it points us to what is within, and 
‘not to something, we know not what, lying some- 


where, we know not where, outside of itself, for 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 21 


the knowledge which we seek, for the source from 
which it springs. Through all its living species, and 
all its cosmic harmonies, through all its ranks and 
orders, it says to us, if you would know the life of 
the. Creator—if you would know what manner of 
life it is which he lives, seek the knowledge of it in 
our lives, for he lives in us. 

Such, therefore, as our lives are in their principle, 
such also is his life-—for in him we live and move 
and have our being—his life is the principle of our 
lives—zt zs our lives in thetr principle. The life of 
God and the life of nature are not one and the same 
life, but the life of nature is the living product of 
the life of God, and his life produces and sustains 
the life of nature, and establishes and maintains the 
order and the unity and the harmony of the uni- 
verse—not as something existing extraneously to it, 
and operating upon it from without as external and 
mechanical will and force, but by living and exert- 
ing his own vital energies within it. Out of this 
circle thus pervaded by the life of God, it is impos- 
sible for us even in thought to pass; for there is 
outside of it nothing for thought to fasten itself 
upon, and therefore nothing that it can pass to; and 
there would be no means of making the passage or 
of bridging the chasm between that and us, and thus 


reaching the other side, if there were another side 


Die: RATEOSOPA YO F, 


to it. For life can be joined to life only by living 
links, and there is no chain by which the living cause 
can bind its effects to itself, but one whose links are 
living, and forged out of the material of its own life. 

In the realm of mechanism, the cause does not live 
and move and have its being in its effects, nor (vice 
versa) do effects live in the life of their causes, and 
therefore there is nothing in the effect to reveal any- 
thing in relation to its cause, except force and skill 
sufficient to contrive and produce it. All that a 
watch, for example, reveals in reference to its maker 
is, that he, for some reason or other, wanted an in- 
strument by which to measure time, and that he had 
power and skill eaough to contrive and manufacture 
this.. Nothing more than this can be known about 
his purposes or his ends, his faculties or his charac- 
ter, if we are limited to the watch as our source of 
information. Let us not then allow ourselves to be 
referred any more toa cause outside of the universe, 
and sustaining only mechanical] relations to it, to ex- 
plain the mystery of its nature or the fact of its 
existence. It exists /vom a cause and for a cause 
within itself. And it is, and is what it is, because 
that cause is, and is where and what it is. It could 
- not have existed at all except from a cause—and it 
could not have been what it is, except for a cause 


influencing the mind of him who produced it. And 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 23 


the cause that has produced such a universe as this 
must have possessed the height of wisdom and in- 
telligence, and been actuated by motives of infinite 
goodness and love. - 

- How beautifully and conclusively the apostle 
treats this argument in his address to the Athenians 
on Mars’ Hill: Forasmuch then, he says, as we are 
rational and intelligent beings, capable of propos- 
ag to ourselves the wisest, the noblest, and best 
ends in all that we do, and never consciously acting 
without motives or without reference to an end, we 
ought not to think that our Creator is like unto silver 
or gold or stone, graven by art and man’s device. He 
teaches them that it. is a logical absurdity, as well 
as inconsistent with anything like a rational .relig- 
ion, to think that our Creator is so utterly unlike 
us and so immeasurably inferior to us as that makes 
him. He teaches that to ascribe life, reason, intel- 
ligence, moral and intellectual faculties, religion and 
love, as we find them in ourselves, to dead, sense- 


less inorganic matter—mere metal and stone 


as 
their cause—is as contrary to reason and common 
sense as anything can be, and the grossest imposition 
and wrong that we can practice upon ourselves, un- 
utterably degrading to our humanity, and demoral- 
izing to our natures. 


. Thus it is wholly owing to the organic relation 


24 PHILOSOPH Y> OF 


existing between God and the universe, that it is 
possible to obtain any knowledge of him by means 
of it, or that it throws any light upon the question 
of his nature or his attributes. When I say that 
nature points within herself for the explanation of 
the fact of her existence, and says, if you would 
know the secret of my origin seek it within me, she 
does not mean to refer her origin to herself, and to 
say that she is her own creator; but that. the prin- 
ciple out of which her life and being have flowed, is, 
(not herself, but) within herself,—and works and 
- manifests itself in and through her. She means to 
bear witness to the organic connection existing be- 
tween herself and her divine original. Not that the 
two existences and natures are one and the same 
thing, identically, but that they are organically one, 
the one existing within, and as the producing cause | 
and fountain-head of the other. 

God lives in nature and nature in God, that they 
may be made perfect in and by virtue of their 
organic unity. Does not Christ recognize this 
great principle of the organic relation between na- 
ture and God, when he prays in words not otherwise 
intelligible, that they all may be one, as thou Father 
art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in 
us. And the glory which thou gavest me I have 
given them, that they may be one even as we are one, 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 25 


I in them and thou tn me, that they may be made 
perfect in one. 

Thus much for the relation between God and the 
universe, and for the manner in which God is made 
known to*us, and we arrive at the knowledge of him 
through the medium of his works. If they were not 
organically connected with him,—he in them and 
they in him,-—there would be nothing in them to 
throw light upon the question of his nature, or to 

‘impart any knowledge or idea of him. If God were 
not within his work and within us, the idea of God 
as it is reflected upon us from the things which he 
has made, and especially in the light of our own 
inward being and consciousness, could never have 
had being in our minds. Just as external objects 
are to us what they reveal themselves to be 
through our bodily sensations and experience; as 
external experience is our only source of knowledge 
regarding them, so is our inward experience the 
only source of any true knowledge concerning God. 
He only that knows something experimentally of 
the soul’s life and of the life of God in the soul, 
knows anything of God at all. He alone has proper 
and trustworthy conceptions of the nature and at- 
tributes of him that made him. All that comes to 
us from other and outside sources, and is not the 
reflection of the light and of the witness of the spirit_ 


3 


26 PHILOSOPHY OF 


within, can be little else than vazw wzsdom all, and 
false philosophy. It can be little else than supersti- 
tion and folly, and an imposition upon our igno- 
rance, our weakness, our fears, and our credulity. 
If we receive what we call the knowledge of God 
from any source but the Spirit itself, witnessing in 
and with our spirit, what we receive must be false- 
hood, whose only tendency: is to quench the in- 
ward light, to put out the eye and destroy the life 
of our souls. Except as with the eye of our own 
spiritual being we “ read the eternal deep’’—and in — 
our inward experience are conscious of the presence 
of something within us that is infinite, all holy and 
Eternal—and thus, to use the language of Words- 
worth, of being “haunted forever by the Ezernal 
mind,” it is impossible that that mind should be re- 
vealed to us. The greatest foe to human progress 
and elevation, the greatest obstacle in the way of 
the true knowledge of God, is a material and me- 
chanical philosophy which has usurped the place of 
reason and experience, and the laws of spiritual life, 
in the interpretation of nature and of the Scriptures, 
and in the construction of our theological systems. 
There can be no such thing as genuine and radical 
reform in our theology, and we can never arrive at 
a true interpretation of nature and Scripture with- 


out a reformed philosophy, in the place of the arbi- 


‘TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 27 


— 


trary and lifeless systems that have so long held 
~ almost undisputed and unquestioned sway; which 
know nothing of any force but that which is mate- 
rialistic, and recognize no laws of nature but those 
of mechanical action and reaction, and no life of 
nature but what is the result of them. 

What is needed is a philosophy that recognizes 
nothing as real, or entitled to any place in the na- 
ture of things, but what is living and organic, that 
acknowledges no universe but the living universe, 
no God but the living God; no relation: between 
the universe and God, but that between the living 
body and its living Head, between the living and 
the life-giving vine and its living branches. 

But our argument is incomplete until it has done 
more than to prove the necessity of the organic 
connection between God and his creatures, in order 
that they may have the means of any right knowl- 
edge of him. It must prove, also, the organic 
unity of the Creator within himself. It must dem- 
_ onstrate the philosophical and religious necessity 
of conceiving of the Godhead as an organic unity, 
and not as unique, or absolutely one and simple in 
the nature of its being, and without organic con- 
nection to anything that has living being outside 
of itself. 

Between God and a monad there jis nothing in 


28 PHILOSOPHY OF 


common, and no_ resemblance—none whatever. 
God has living and organic relations, as has been 
proved; but a monad, according to its definition, 
has no such relations, and it belongs to the neces- 
sary conception of it that it should have none. 
Therefore, God is not a monad. If not a monad, or 
abstract unity, then, if he is a unity at all (and he 
is a unity), he must be an organic unity. 

Whatever, then, may be the nature or the inti- 
macy of the relations between God and us, the 
divine nature and ours are not the same. The God- 
head has a nature of its own, distinct and different 
from that of the manhood (or the Humanity con- 
sidered as an order of being); the two orders differ 
not in degree or rank merely, but also in kind. 
The one nature does not differ from the other 
merely as a different form or modification of a na- 
ture which at bottom and essentially is one and the 
same. The Creator cannot change his own essen- 
tial form and nature and become a creature. God 
cannot become aynan, any more than a man can become 
God. When we speak of God and a man we are 
uniformly understood to be speaking, not of two 
different modifications of one and the same nature, 
but of two different natures—the one that of the 
creature, the other that of the creator. Now, how 


is the one, the creature-nature, to come into vital 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 29 


union and experimental and conscious communion 
with the other, the creator-nature, differing as 
the two natures do, not in degree merely, but 
also in kind? It is only in virtue of those 
elements which the two natures have in common ; 
it is only, that is,.in virtue of the communion of 
nature between two persons, that the one can, with 
his consciousness, enter into the consciousness of 
the other, so as thus to become conscious of the 
consciousness or of the feelings of the other. Such 
interpenetration of experiences requires a common 
nature, so far, at least, as these correlated and coun- 
terpart experiences are concerned. 

How, then, can the mind of man come to the ex- 
perimental knowledge of the mind of the Godhead ? 
(For we know the Godhead only in so far as we 
know its mind, or know it 7 its mind.) 

The doctrine of the organic unity of the Godhead 
gives the only possible answer to that question. The 
conception of the Godhead, as an organic unity, fur- 
nishes the only answer, and reveals the only means 
by which the two natures can be brought into fel- 
lowship and communion of feeling and of knowledge 
with each other. There is one God and one Media- 
tor between God and man (that ts, between the God- 
head and the manhood), the God-man Christ $esus. 
The mind of the Godhead reveals and communi-. 


30 PHIEOSOPH ¥ OF 


cates itself to the mind of man through the me- 
diation of the nature and person of Christ, who 
is at once and in his one nature, both God and 
man. The two natures meet and combine in the 
one undivided and indivisible nature of the man 
Christ Jesus—who is man in the sense of being 
not a man, but the principle of our humanity—or 
our humanity in its principle. Now, between Christ 
and us there is communion of nature, because he is. 
our nature in its principle, and surely there can be 
no obstacle to the most vital and intimate commu- 
nion of knowledge and feeling between each individ- 
ual man, and him who is not a man, but the very 
life and life-principle of all that is human in his 
nature. But if he combines in his one nature 
the two natures—the nature of the Godhead and 
that of the manhood, thus in communing with him 
(as we are enabled immediately to do through his 
real humanity), we commune with the nature and 
heart and mind of the Godhead through him: Not 
directly with the Father, because between his par- 
ticular nature and ours there is nothing in common, 
but our communion is with the Father indirectly 
through our communion with the Son. . 
Christ, through his divine nature, and as himself 
within the Godhead, is in immediate communion 


with the Father. There is no necessity of a media- 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 31 


tor between him and his Father, any more than: 
there is of a mediator between us and Christ. 
There is an organic unity of life and of nature 
between the Father and the Son, so that in com- 
muning with him we are brought, through the 
medium of his life and nature, into cornmunion 
with the life of the Father, which is in him as the 
life-principle of his life. (John vi. 57.) This mystery 
is plainly asserted by Christ himself. He admits the 
impossibility of any immediate knowledge of the 
Father by us; but at the same time says, that having 
seen him, we are without excuse if we say that we 
have not seenthe Father. Hethat hath seen me hath 
seen the Father. How, then, after having seen me, 
sayest thou, “ Show us the Father?” Believest 
thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in 
me? YVhe words that I speak to you I speak not of 
myself, but the Father that dwelleth tn me-—he doeth 
the works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and 
the Father 1n me. Hence, Christ being organically 
one with us, and at the same time organically one 
with the Father, brings our nature into organic rela- 
tions with the Supreme Deity of the Father. It 
is thus by means of the organic relations of the 
Godhead within itself that it becomes capable of 
entering into organic relations with us, and thus of 


communicating himself vitally and intelligibly to us. 


32 PAILGQSORAY~ OF 


In order that the nature of Christ may mediate 
between the nature of the Father and our nature, 
his nature must in some respect be different from 
ours at the same time that it is one with it. If it were 
in no respect different from ours, it could not stand 
asa third term between ours and another nature. His 
occupying a position between the two parties makes 
it necessary to regard him as being in some sense one 
with both, at the same time that there are respects 
in which he differs from both. If in his own proper 
and peculiar nature he did not combine properties 
of the nature of both, the two could not meet in 
him, and he could not be the medium, and mediate 
between them. If, besides, there were not respects 
in which he differs from both, he could not be reck- 
oned asa third term or party between them. In 
what respect, then, is Christ one with us? I answer, 
he is one with us as being zot one of us, but all of us, 
and all there is of us, except our zmperfections and 
our sins. In other words, he is one with us as being 
our humanity in its principle and fountain-head. He 
and we are one, to use his own illustration, in 
the sense that the vine and its branches are one, 
and he differs from us as the vine differs from the 
branches. Jam the vine, yeare the branches. The 
vine and its branches are not so one but that the 


vine has a life of its own, distinct and different 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. ae 


from that of its branches, whilst the branches have 
a life of their own distinct and different from that 
of the vine. To make the matter plain, and show 
clearly and beyond the need of any possible mis- 
take, how it is that the Son mediates between 
the Father and us, we have only to represent Christ 
by the vine and ourselves by the branches, thus 
showing at once the oneness and the difference 
between him and us. Then, suppose that the vine 
is itself branch to something else which is to it 
what it is to us. Let Christ thus be represented 
as standing between his Father, who is his vine 
on the one hand, and us, who are his branches, 
on the other, and the illustration is complete. He 
mediates between the Father and us by being at 
once branch to him and vine tous. He is in his 
Father and his Father in him, just as we are in 
him and he in us. If it were not, then, for the 
organic relations existing within the Godhead—if 
it were not at once within the unity of its own being 
both Father and Son, it could sustain no organic 
relations to us, and without these there would be 
no means by which we could come to the knowledge 
of’ it." 


a 


* To show that in what I have written entirely “without book,” 
and on the sole authority of Scripture and my own mind, on this fun- 
damental point of the mediatorial nature of Christ as God-man, medi- 


oa 


34 PHILOSOPHY OF 


ator ; that only as being both God and man could he mediate between 
God and man, but that whilst uniting the elements of both parties in 
his one undivided and indivisible nature he must be different 
from both in order not to be identical with either party, but to 
constitute a third party standing between the two; I say, in order 
to show that on this great point, though trusting to myself under 
no leading but that of the plain and necessary sense of Scripture, 
I have not shot very wide of the mark of the free and unso- 
phisticated judgment and opinion of the best minds of the best 
age of the Christian Church, I desire to add here the admirable 
statement by Neander of the position of the great Athanasius, firmly 
and consistently maintained by him in the Nicene Council, and, 
amidst all the changes, strifes and persecutions that resulted imme- 
diately from it, never departed from byhim. The statement of Nean- 
der reads like a grand summing-up and condensation of all the vital 
points concerned in the great controversy so fraught with results and 
consequences of weal and of woe, but especially of the latter, to the 
Church in all the succeeding ages. 

“After having been enlisted but for a short period in favor of the 
Homo-onsion he (Constantine) had been drawn back again to those 
earlier views, which would so much more readily present themselves 
to a layman contemplating the matter simply in its outward aspects, 
that personal passions and a self{-willed, disputatious spirit had given 
to these questions, which did not pertain in the least to the essentials 
of Christianity, an undue importance. The Emperor entertaining 
this view of the matter, all who agreed in representing the doctrinal 
differences as unimportant, would especially commend themselves to 
his favor ; while all who were unwilling, for the sake of gratifying the 
Emperor, to moderate their zeal in behalf of a truth which they 
found to be intimately connected with the essence of Christianity, 
would easily become suspected and hated by him, as uneasy, conten- 
tious and disorderly men. 

“Hence may be explained the contests which first and préeminently 
the remarkable person had to pass through who had now become the 
head of the Homo-onsion party in the Eastern Church. For soon 
after the conclusion of the Council of Nice, the bishop Alexander 
had died, and was succeeded by the archdeacon Athanasius, a man 
far his superior in intellect and resolute energy. Athanasius had 
probably been already, up to this time, the soul of the party in favor 


_LRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 35 


of the Homo-onsion, and it was by his influence that the bishop 
Alexander had been led to decide that nothing should be yielded in 
order to the restoration of Arius. Moreover, he had already dis- 
tinguished himself at the Nicene Council, by the zeal and acuteness 
with which he defended the doctrine of the unity of essence, and 
combated Arianism. By pursuing with strict consistency and 
unwavering firmness, during an active life of nearly half a century, 
and amid every variety of fortune and many persecutions and suffer- 
ings, the same object, in opposition to those parties whose doctrinal 
views were either unsettled in themselves, or liable to veer about 
with every change of the air at Court, he contributed in a great 
measure to promote the victory of the Homo-onsion in the Eastern 
Church. If we consider the connection of thought and ideas in the 
doctrinal system of this father, we shall, doubtless be led to see, that, 
in contending for the Homo-onsion, he by no means contended for a 
mere speculative formula, standing in no manner of connection with 
what constitutes the essence of Christianity; that, in this controversy, 
it was by no means a barely dialectic or speculative interest that 
actuated him, but in reality an essentially Christian interest. On 
the holding fast to the Homo-onsion depended, in his view, the 
whole unity of the Christian consciousness of God, the completeness 
of the revelation of God in Christ, the reality of the redemption 
which Christ wrought, and of the communion with God restored» by 
him to man. “If Christ,’ so argued Athanasius against the Arian 
doctrine, ‘ differed from other creatures simply as being the only 
creature immediately produced by God, then he could not bring the 
creature into fellowship with God, since we must be constrained to 
conceive of something still intermediate between him, as a creature, 
and the divine essence which differed from him, something whereby 
he might stand in communion with God ; and this intermediate being 
would be precisely the Son of God in the proper sense. In analyz- 
ing the conception of God communicated to the creature it would be 
necessary to arrive at the conception of that which requires nothing 
intermediate in order to communion with God ; which does not partici- 
patein God's essence as something foreign from itself, but which ts itself 
the self-communicating essence of God. This is the only Son of God, 
the only being who can be so called in the proper sense. The 
expressions Son of God and divine generation are of a symbolical 
nature, and denote simply the communication of the divine essence. 


. 


36 PHILOSOPHY OF 


It is only on the supposition that Christ is, in this sense alone, the 
proper Son of God, that he can make rational creatures Children of 
God. It is the Logos who imparts himself to them, dwells within 
them, and through whom they live in God—the Son of God within 


them, through the fellowship of whom they become themselves. 


Children of God,’ It is here seen how in Athanasius the idea of the 
Homo-onsion presented itself in connection with what constitutes 
the root and groundwork of the entire Christian life. While the 
Arians mantained that it was impossible to distinguish the concep- 
tions Son of God and generation from God from the conceptions 
created being, and a creature, without falling into sensuous, anthro- 
pomorphic representations, Athanasius on the contrary, taught that 
all human expressions of God were of a symbolic nature, taken from 
temporal things, and therefore liable to be misconceived unless the 
idea lying at the bottom were freed from the elements of time and 
sense, and the same attribute, predicated of God, understood in a dif- 
ferent manner from what it would be when predicated of creatures. 
Even God’s act of creation, in order not to be misconceived, must be 
distinguished from the human mode of producing and forming. As 
the Arians admitted that, according to John v. 23, divine worship 
belonged to Christ, Athanasius accused them of showing that honor 
to a creature, according to their notions of Christ, which belonged to 
God alone; consequently of falling into idolatry. From this coher- 
ence of the doctrines which Athanasius defended with his whole 
Christian consciousness, it may be well conceived that he must have 
considered himself bound by his duty as a pastor, not to admit into 
his Church a teacher who held forth a system which appeared to him 
to be so thoroughly unchristian.”—Veander’s History of the Christian 
Religion and Church. Vol. I1., pp. 380, 381. 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. ag 


Le 


Christ, the Principle of our Immortality. 


THE prevailing doctrine respecting our immor- 
tality is, and has for the most part been, that the 
soul is naturally and éssentially immortal; that the 
life imparted to it at its creation is a thing that 
having once been must forever be; that it is 
dependent on nothing outside of itself for sustenance 
or support, but is in such a sense self-supporting 
that no withdrawal of the favor or the support of 
its Creator on the one hand, nor any inflictions of 
his anger on the other, can in the least affect the 
strength of its hold on life, or the conditions upon 
which the perpetuity of its existence depends. This 
doctrine, of course, denies the existence of any 
organic connections between the life of the soul and 
the lives of other living beings in the universe. It 
makes it a poor, finite, solitary, inorganic object in 
the abyss of infinite being, living necessarily, twink- 
ling endlessly, in spite of itself, and in spite of all 
assaults of finite evil, and all withdrawal of divine 
support, living by the inherent necessity of its own 
nature. This is not only the pagan doctrine, but, 


38 PHILOSOPHY OF 


strange to say, the prevalent Christian doctrine, 
notwithstanding that it finds no support in Scrip- 
ture, and is contrary to reason and to the analogy 
of nature and of Christianity. 

But the Christian history shows that the first 
shining of the light of the Gospel had.a strong 
tendency to cast doubt on this view of the subject. 
As matter of fact, Justin Martyr,* who was bred a 
Platonist, and the first of the Christian fathers whose 
writings are extant, was led, as soon as he became 
a convert to the Christian faith, to deny the Platonic 
doctrine of the natural and inherent immortality 
of the soul, as directly and radically inconsistent 
not only with the analogy of Christianity, but with 
the plain and express teachings of Christ and His 
apostles. Many of the early Greek fathers of 
the ante-Nicene period agreed with him in this 
opinion, and it was the prevailing sentiment of 
the educated Christian mind of the first three 
centuries. Justin understood Christ tacitly to deny 
the inherent and natural immortality of the soul, 
and to ascribe it to Himself as its eternal principle, 
and to teach that it could belong to man only as 
derived from the absolute source, the Eternal 


Father, through him. Christ represents himself as 


* He sealed his testimony with his blood in the persecution under 
the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 39 


~~ 


the bread of immortality which came down from 
heaven, that a man may eat thereof and zor die, 
which is as much as directly to say that there is no 
principle of immortality in man by nature, and that 
if he does not derive the principle (the bread) of it 
from Christ, there is nothing to prevent his dying as 
the brute dies. He further says: Except ye eat the 
flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man ye have 
no life tn you—that is, nothing that survives the 
body, nothing that exempts you from the same 
death that overtakes and destroys forever all the 
successive ranks and generations of animal as 
well as vegetable life that swarm on all the face 
of the earth. The Apostle John puts this point in 
a very strong light in several unequivocal passages, 
which I cannot forbear quoting in this connection. 
And the world passeth away and the lust thereof, but 
he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. What 
fair and unforced interpretation can be put upon 
these words by those who hold that immortality is 
irrespective .of character, that the wicked are 
immortal, and as certain of abiding forever as the 
righteous! Again, this same apostle says: And 
this is the record: that God hath given to us 
eternal life (that is, immortality), and ¢hzs fe ts 
wm his Son—he that hath the Son hath immortal , 
life, but he that hath not the Son hath not life. It 


40 PHILOSOPHY OF 


is only, that is to say, by having the Son that we 
can have the. life of which he is the principle. 
The commonly-received doctrine, however, denies 
this dependence of the soul for its immortality upon 
a vital and spiritual union with Christ, and makes it 
a matter of nature and necessity, and insists upon 
the immortality of the soul as a thing entirely 
independent of character, or any relations which 
the soul may sustain to the spirit and life of Christ. 
It makes it a separate, inalienable, necessary 
possession, depending wholly upon nature and not 
at all upon grace, and belonging to the worst as 
well as to the best of men; to those that are out of 
Christ, and cut off from the life of God by the 
wickedness which is in them, as well as to those that 
are in Christ and drink most deeply into the spirit 
‘of his life, and draw most abundantly from him 
the life of their lives. But no man can, in view of 
the cardinal facts in the case, be rationally per- 
suaded of the truth of any such doctrine of immor- 
tality as this. What support can it find, either in 
Scripture or reason, experience or analogy? We 
say none: there is no evidence of its truth; on the 
contrary, all nature, reason, Scripture, and analogy, 
are against it. Men have held to it for lack of 
Scripture light, and because they have not under- 
stood the philosophy of life and of living nature. 


“ss 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. Al 


It is, in short, because they have not learnt 


that great and fundamental principle of nature ~ 


which all fact supports, without a solitary known or 


conceivable exception—that all life is organic; that 
there is not anywhere in the world, either of nature 
or spirit, any such thing as a life that is wzgue—or 
absolutely one and simple, individual and solitary— 
with no organic connections within itself or with any 
other life. The truth is (and the proposition needs 
only to be made in order to secure universal assent), 
that life exists in species, races, and orders, and in 
no other way: beneath the throne of God there is 
not such a thing as life that does not belong to a 
living species. And, moreover, there is no such 
thing as a species that does not constitute an 
organic unity, consisting of its fountain-head and its 
members—of the universal generic principle of unity 
and of life, and of the particular members with 
their individualizing and differentiating character- 
istics which receive their unity and their generic 
character from it. It is impossible that there 
should be any such thing as life in an individual 
which he does not derive from the life-principle 
or fountain-head of the species to which he be- 
longs. For he cannot exist without being either 
himself the generic principle of a species, or be- 


longing to a species as a particular member of it— 


Nl RNs 


Se eens 


42 PHILOSOPHY OF 


just as it is impossible that there should be life in 
a branch which is not derived from the vine with 
which it is in living and organic connection. Ac- 
cordingly, Christ represents it to be wholly owing 
to our organic connection with him that we have 
any power to bear fruit, or even to live at all--as 
the branch cannot bear fruzt of ttself except it 
abide in the vine. And as to the possibility of our 
living without vital connection with him, he says, 
Without me ye can do nothing—you cannot even so 
much as‘live, or be at all, to say nothing of the 
ability to bear fruit. If a man abide not in me, he 
is cast forth as a branch that has separated itself 
from the vine (supposing such a thing to be possi- 
ble), and men gather them and cast them into the 
fire, and they are burned. We do therefore greatly 
err and involve ourselves in great and needless dark- 
ness and distress of mind, in reference to this great 
question of our immortality, when in thought we 
isolate ourselves from all organic connection with 
the eternal fountain of life, and strive to believe in 
our immortality—in a life that survives the wreck 
of the grave and the doom of all merely natural 
things and perpetuates itself to all eternity. For it 
is not upon an individual status, nor in our individ- 
ual capacity without reference to our organic con- 


nection with the great whole of the body, and the 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 43 


great principle of the body’s life, that we are to 
‘regard the question of our immortality. It is not 
an individual so much as an organic question. The 
question is in reality in reference to the immor- 
tality of the organization to which we belong, and 
of which we are living and essential members and 
organs. If that is immortal, we are immortal. Our 
destiny is bound up with that of the system of 
which we are members, and of which we constitute 
essential and organic parts. If that lives, we shall 
live. Accordingly, Christ speaking of himself as 
the fountain of the body which is his church, says, 
Because I live ye shall live also. The body cannot 
die so long as its head lives, and no member of that 
body, whose life is thus assured, can die so long as 
it remains a member, and retains its vital connec- 
tion with the organic source and principle of life. 
To individualize ourselves, and look upon our- 
selves in our merely individual capacity without 
reference to the body or organization to which our 
souls belong, and strive to believe in our immortality 
on such a false assumption as that, is like striving to 
believe in the continued and perpetual burning of 
the flame of a lamp without reference to the oil in 
the lamp, from which it is fed. It is as though we 
should expect the flame to burn on forever without 
any lamp, or any oil in the lamp to feed and sustain 


44 PHILOSOPHY OF 


it. . The flame must have something to draw upon © 
besides itself before it can have any chance to burn 
for any great length of time. It requires more than 
an individual supply. It must have the lamp be- 
neath it, and the supply in the lamp must be inex- 
haustible enough to support the innumerable 
flames on the particular burners that branch out 
from it. If we are to have the true faith of our im- 
mortality, the faith that 2s full of tmmortality and 
full of glory—that undoubting and blessed assur- 
ance which is the privilege of the Christian, we must 
look upon ourselves not in our individual capacity, 
but as one with all the redeemed in Christ Jesus. 
We never have any difficulty in embracing with per- 
fect assurance the immortality of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. Indeed we cannot help believing in it, for 
he is not zmmortal, so much as immortality—the 
principle itself. Wecannot, therefore, believe in him 
without believing in immortality so far as concerns 
him. But to believe in it as zt 2s 2x him is to believe 
in it also in regard to those that are in him, for they 
cannot die whilst he lives unless they shall separate 
themselves from him or be separated from him 
against their wills. But neither of these is possible. 
There is no power that can separate us from the 
love and the life of Christ—so long as we love him, 


and having loved him once it is impossible to con- 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 45 


ceive of the possibility of the voluntary withdrawal 
of our love. 

What Christ is he must forever be, and what he 
has he must forever keep. My sheep hear my voice, 
and I know them, and they follow me: and J give 
unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish ; 
neither shall any pluck them out of my hand. My 
Father which gave them me is greater than all, and 
no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s 
hands. Moreover, with the same assurance with 
which we believe in the immortality of Christ, we 
believe in the immortality of the church, not merely 
as an organization that is to be perpetuated, but in 
the immortality of each of its members. For in 
that organization it is not necessary that one gener- 
ation of its members should die and pass away in 
order to give place for another. Its generations do 
not die. Nay, it has no succession of generations as 
the species in nature have, but all its members from 
the first to the last constitute but a s¢zgle generation. 
There is ixcrease but no succession. The one gener- 
ation of believers in Christ is not born till we all 
come, from the first to the last believer, zz the unity 
of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of 
God unto a perfect manhood—unto the measure of 
the stature of the fullness of Christ. 

But what is the ground of this implicit faith which 


46 PHILOSOPHY OF 


we have in the immortality of the church? It is 
that it is the church of the living God. It is that 
we know that its head is a living head, and the un- 
conscious and necessary ratiocination of our minds 
in the premises is, that because he lives, she shall 
live also. The church lives because it is inseparable 
from its living head. It lives and it must live be; 
cause he, who cannot die, whose grand distinction 
is that he ever liveth, lives in it, to maintain its life, 
and to cause it to flourish in undecaying youth and 
vigor forever. If the source of the life of Azs body 
were mortal, as the principle of our bodily life is, 
then “zs body would die just as ours does. If the 
life-principle of our bodies were immortal as that of 
the body of Christ is, then our bodies would be 
immortal as his body, which is the church, is. 
What, then, have we to do in order to be fully 
and finally established in the doctrine of our indi- 
vidual and personal immortality? I answer, we 
‘must habitually and in obedience to the spontaneous 
and natural logic of our feelings and our instincts 
regard ourselves, not in our individual, but in our 
organic capacity, not as standing each alone, asa 
single stalk on its own separate root, but as mem- 
bers of his body, and rooted and grounded in him 
who is the one root and life principle of our 


humanity. Nothing else can do so much for us 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 47 


because nothing else is so true to nature, or puts us 
at the true point of view in reference to this great 
subject, as this view of our organic relations to 
Christ, ourcommon membership and fellowship with 
each other in his body does. The radical principle 
upon which this argument rests, and which is to 
be steadily kept in view, is that the life of the body 
tmplies the life of its members. The member that 
as separated from the body instantly dies. The mem- 
ber that abides and keeps its place and performs tts 
functions in the body lives as surely and as long as 
that lives. 

This holds universally ; as regards the members 
of the natural body—the hand, the foot, the eye, 
the ear—its truth is self-evident; and as soon as 
it is stated and the attention calied to it, it is vivid- 
ly impressed upon the mind, as_ representing the 
universal and most fundamental principle within 
the realm of the natural life. There is life for the 
member only in the place where it grew, only in 
the place where and for which it was produced. 
When it is no longer what and where nature made 
it to be, and when it no longer answers the end or 
performs the function for which nature made it, 
wz is nothing. It annihilates itself by removing 
itself out of its-organic connections. Out of and 


independent of these connections it can do nothing 


48 PHILOSOLE Vodat, 


and it can de nothing. It is in reality nothing, 
when it is not what it was made to be, nor doing 
what it was made to do. In these its natural re- 
lations, it has not only its usefulness, its honor, 
and its prosperity but its very beimg also. Only 
ask again what becomes of the branch when once 
it is severed from the vine, and the’ connection 
which made it organically one with the vine cut 
off. What is there for it but to perish; and what 
is there that can save it from death? Nothing! 
There is no power in heaven or earth, in God or 
man, whereby the life of a branch thus severed 
from all vital connection can be preserved in life. 
God and nature can act only in conformity with 
their own laws of action and of being. It is not 
in the power of miracle to make such a thing as that 
severed branch live. No such miracle ever was 
wrought or ever can be. There is no help for such 
a branch, no, not in nature nor in miracle. 

Now the only question is whether this principle 
does not hold and apply equally and in all its force 
within this spiritual realm! Is not all life organic, 
the life of the soul as universally and necessarily as 
that of the body? Whatever may be the differences 
between the life of the soul and the body they are 
exactly alike in this, that they are both and equally 


organic. And it is just as impossible for a soul to 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 49 


exist, or be anything out of its organic relations 
as it is for a member of the natural body, or a 
branch of the literal vine. Christ establishes this 
beyond a peradventure by illustrating the condi- 
tions upon which the life of the soul depends, by 
the comparison which he draws from physical 
nature. If the analogy and the law of nature in 
this respect did not extend to, and were not uniform 
and identical through, the two realms there would 
be no force in the comparison. Nothing could be 
learned by it. What he intended to teach would 
not be taught, viz.: that .a// life ts organic, life in 
the realm of spirit, equally with that in the realm 
of physical nature. 

He intends to say: the relations which your 
lives sustain to mine are organic, your lives sprang 
out of mine and are dependent on mine, just as 
much as that of the branches springs out of the 
vine and is dependent on it. Out of me and of 
organic relation with me, life is no more possible 
for you than for the branch that is cut or broken 
off from the vine. Other Scriptural symbols teach 
the same thing, as, notably, that in Eph. iv. 15,. 16, 
where the relation between the church and its head 
is illustrated by the relation which the animal 
body sustains to the life-principle out of which it 
grows. Seealso Eph. ii. 21, 22. 

4 


50 PIHILOSORTT EOF 


Now if this be so, if the soul has no more a life 
of its own independent of its life-principle and or- 
ganic head than the branch a life of its own inde- | 
pendent of the vine in which it lives and out of which 
it grows; then how can the result of organic sepa- 
ration be different in the one case from what it is 
in the other? The Saviour himself expressly says 
there is no difference, that the result in both cases 
is the same. And that for the simple reason that 
the soul has no more a life that is unique and inde- 
pendent of organic connections than a branch of 
a vine or a member of an animal body. To the 
soul, therefore, that separates itself from Christ, 
its spiritual head, there is no more possibility of 
life than there is for a branch that is separated 
from the stock on which it grew. 

In the one case, it is true, the separation is vol- 
untary, in the other not. But that makes no dif- 
ference as to the result, which must in both. cases 
be the same, and that is death / 

It is within the option of the spiritual branch to 
say whether it ‘will separate itself or not; but it is 
not within its option to determine whether, after 
the separation it will remain a living thing, a 
living soul, or not! That is a question that is 
determined for it by the law of its nature and of its 
creation and which is not left for it to settle for 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 51 


itself. Separated from the source of life, cut off 
from the eternal fountain-head from which all life 
springs, how, thus unfueled and unfed, is it going to 
perpetuate its life? Can it become a life-source 
for itself? Is there any such potency in its freedom 
of will as to enable it to accomplish this more than 
miracle—this greater wonder than any that God 
himself can perform for it? Can it in the might of 
its own innate and inherent freedom, in its being’s 
separation and exile, accomplish it for itself? Can 
it in its own strength perform for itself what God 
cannot by any strength which he possesses perform 
for it? 

Can it change its nature, and its rank, and its 
office, in the scale of being at its own pleasure, and 
from being a branch become at once a vine, an 
organic principle and life-source, the source of life 
not only to itself, but to others also? If it cannot 
do this, then, if it is to exist at all, it must remain 
just what, and just where, God made it to be. If 
he made it fora member or an organ of some other 
life which is fountain-head to it, then such it must 
remain, or be nothing. But separated from the 
Living Spirit from which it grew, and of whose 
life it is the product, it cannot perform the functions 
of an organ. The Spirit can no longer dwell in it, 


and use it as its organ when it is no longer a part: 


52 PHILOSOPHY OF 


of its body, and stands no longer in any vital rela- 
tions with itself. When it is no longer one of the 
constituent elements, or parts that from the in- 
dwelling of the the living corner-stone are organ- 
ized together into an holy temple in the Lord— 
into an habitation of God through the Spirit, 
_ it will be nothing at all—it will have no being when 
it has no place in, and constitutes no part of, the 
livingtemple. Not being in the Lord, nor the Lord, 
it is impossible to conceive what it can be, or how 
it can be at all. It becomes a thing without a 
life, without a nature, without a relation, without 
a function. It is neither cause nor effect—it is 
neither antecedent nor consequent—it is neither 
subject nor object—it is neither root or branch, 
body or spirit, property or subject. It is a thing 
unknown, indefinable, unknowable, znconcetvable, and 
impossible! Existence is inconceivable upon such 
terms and under such conditions. The attempt to 
state what it is, is simply the statement of the 
impossibility of there being any such thing at all. 
Why, then, ascribe not only existence, but immor- 
tality, to a thing of which none but a negative 
description is possible. 

The problem it presents is, Gzven negative proper- 
ties without number, out of their joint action to produce 


a positive subject. 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 53 


There is no such thing as creaturely life that has 
not its root in the eternal and absolute life of God. 
And the Divine life itself exists not alone. There 
is, indeed, no other life on which it depends, and 
out of which it springs, but it has branches growing 
out of it, inseparable from it, and dependent on it. 
But the problem which the existence of the soul 
that has alienated itself from the life of God through 
the wickedness which is in it, and loved darkness 
rather than light because its deeds are evil, is 
how to maintain an inorganic and absolutely 
separate life, dependent on no other and with no 
other dependent on that. The consequence to the 
soul by placing itself in such a position as that, if 
position it can be called, is not life, but death—not 
the exchange of one character for another merely, nor 
of one condition or situation of life for another, but 
of life fordeath. This result follows not merely from 
the character of God, nor from the principles of the 
Divine administration, except as those principles 
are identical with the organic structure and con- 
stitution of the universe. The universe is so made, 
its fundamental principles and laws are such, that 
a question of administration resolves itself into a 
question of essential constitution and the eternal 
and unalterable nature of things. The universe is 
so made, then, that the natural and _ inevitable 


54 PiTTOSOL AY Or 


consequence of sin unrepented of—of sin carried to 
a point beyond the possibility of forgiveness—is to 
sever the vital connection between the source of the 
life, which in its nature is immortal, and the soul; 
and such a severance, according to the universal 
and unalterable laws of organic life, can result in 
nothing but what the Scriptures call “death.” The 
soul has no alternative. It must maintain its nor- 
mal relations with the life of God, or it must 
perish. For God so loved the world that he gave 
his only begotten Son, that he that believeth in him 
might not perish, but have a life which is ever- 
lasting. Nothing can be everlasting, zothing im the 
universe of God lasts forever but holiness. here is 
no everlasting life of evil, of misery and sin. It 
is unalterably ordained among the fundamental and 
primal decrees of the Divine Government that 
nothing which in its nature is evil, and which is 
productive of nothing but misery, shall be per- 
petual. Only that whose nature is good, and whose 
only result is Happiness and unalloyed well-being, 
shall last forever. If its nature be evil, its hold on 
life is temporary and transient—only the life which 
is love is happiness and true well-being; and there- 
fore, the life of love is the only one that has any 
promise or possibility of an endless continuance. 


Accordingly, we have the law and the constitution 


ITRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 55 


laid down in words that admit of no doubtful con- 
struction. The wages—the natural and tnevitable 
and guilty consequence of sin unrepented of and unfor- 
given ts death: but immortal life and everlasting 
blessedness are the gift of God through Fesus Christ 
our Lord. And St. James gives the genesis, the 
growth, and final result of sin. He recognizes the 
fact, and describes the nature and the origin of 
sin; but he denies the perpetuity of a thing having 
such a nature and parentage as that. He says: 
Every man, when he is tempted, is drawn away by 
his own lust and enticed. Then, when lust hath con- 
cewwed it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when tt ts finished, 
bringeth forth death. Sinisathing that is some time 
or other to have an end, and it is a thing that in 
finishing itself, completing its work, and arriving at 
its maturity, finishes its subject. It lives upon him, 
and lives in him, as long as there is anything in 
him for it to live upon, and then it dies, and he upon 
whom, and in whom it has fed and lived, of neces- 
sity dies with it. He dies because the vital forces 
within him are all destroyed, and his vitality all 
consumed ; and the consumption of vitality in this 
case must mean not the consumption of the vital 
principle, but the sundering of his connection with 
it through the gradually corrupting and destroying 
power of sin in his soul. Gal. vi. 8. And this is 


56 PHILOSOPAY 4OF 


no novelty either in doctrine or interpretation. It 
has always been the implicit and the practical faith 
of the sincere believer, whether he has thought the 
matter out and intelligently accepted it in theory 
or not. Let Coleridge, under the inspiration of the 
truth as well as of his own genius, express the true 


faith of our immortality for us: 


God’s child in Christ adopted, Christ my all ; 
What that earth boasts were not lost cheaply, rather 
Them forfeit that blest name, by which I call 
The holy one, the Almighty God, my Father! 
Father, in Christ we live, and Christ in thee, 
Eternal thou, and everlasting we. 
The heir of Heaven, henceforth I fear not death, 
In Christ I live; in Christ I draw the breath 
Of the true life. Let then earth, sea and sky 
Make war upon me, on my heart I show 
Their mighty master’s seal. In vain they try 
To end my life, that can but end its woe. 
Is that a death-bed, where a Christian lies ? 


Yes; but not his. "Tis death itself there dies. 


And, furthermore, in the plainest prose he de- 
clares the same doctrine, which is the implicit and 
real, though for the most part suppressed doctrine 
of the church universal, that immortality is not an 
inherent attribute of the human soul, so that what- 
ever may be its character or condition it must still 
live; but that it is the gift of God, through Jesus 


LRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 57 


Christ, our Lord. In the Aids to Reflection (In- 
troductory Aphorism XIII.), he says: ‘ Never did 
there exist a full faith in the Divine Word (by which 
light, as well as Immortality, was brought into the 
world), which did not expand the intellect while it 
purified the heart, which did not multiply the aims 
and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and 
simplified those of the desires and passions.” 


58 FPHHOSOPA Y OF 


Vdd 


Actual personal relations between the Father and the 
Son, and subordination in rank of the Son to the 
Father—(the Son equally with the Father within 
the Unity of the Godhead, but not equal “with him 
in it), as set forth in express terms by Christ him- 


self. 
An Exposition of Fohn v. 8-20. 


THIS exposition is given for the purpose of show- 
ing how perfectly real and practical the personal rela- 
tions between him and his Father were to Christ, and 
how he claimed to exercise divine power and pre- 
rogatives equally with his Father, at the same time 
that he is equally careful to represent himself as 
acting and standing in a subordinate relation to him — 
within the Godhead. 

It has been customary with Trinitarians to deny 
that the relations between the Father and the Son 
in the Godhead are strictly personal or even intel- 
ligible in their nature. They say that there is 
a distinction, but insist that it is sw¢ generzs, that it 
is like no other relation that comes within our 


knowledge, and that consequently there are no 


IRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 59 


analogies or means by which we can form any 
conception of what it is. All we can know of it is 
that itis. The term “ personal” they say is used 
to describe it for want of a better, not because it is 
really such. But that of which we can have no 
conception is, and must forever be, nothing as a 
matter of knowledge to us. In asking us to believe 
in the doctrine, therefore, they say that they do not 
themselves know what it is in which they ask us to 
believe. They ask us to believe in the Trinity as a 
fact of which no explanation can be given. But it 
is not an explanation that we ask for, but only the 
privilege of being informed what the fact is in which 
we are required to believe. A rational explanation 
is not necessary in all cases in order to a rational faith, 
but that we should have some intelligible idea of what 
that is in which we profess to believe is necessary. 
We cannot rationally say that we believe in what is 
expressed in a formula of words unless we know 
what it is that the formula expresses, or, at least, 
that it expresses something besides obvious et ot ae) 
and self-contradiction. : 

Christ, however, treats the distinction as a thing 
not only real, but intelligible. He compares him- 
self with his Father in office, in power, in working 
—mind with mind—heart with heart—exactly as 


though it were a matter between parent and child, 


60 PHILOSOPHY OF 


or one man and another, and there is no good reason 
why he should not be understood accordingly. It 
is certainly most unreasonable to undertake to shape 
his utterances to correspond with such utter dark- 
ness and confusion as reigns in the orthodox state- 
ments of the doctrine of the Trinity and of the 
person of Christ. 

The matter with which the passage before us 
opens, though upon another subject, is not irrelevant 
to the general subject of this work. For including 
it, therefore, I make no apology, especially as it 
stands in such close internal connection with the 
main topic. 

John v. 8, 9—“ Fesus saith unto him, rise and take 
up thy bed and walk. And immediately the man was 
made whole, and took up his bed and walked, and the 
same day was the Sabbath.” 

This scene of healing seems to have been ‘no 
more than an ordinary instance of the exercise of 
that miraculous power which was his by nature, and 
his to exercise at,his own will and pleasure. Our 
English word “walk’’ seems not to be the exact 
equivalent of the corresponding word in the origi- 
nals, which means literally, “ to walk about at 
pleasure.’’ Our phrase, ‘‘ go about your business,”’ | 
would come nearer to it. The meaning then is: 


You need no longer lie here; go where your busi- 


LRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 61 


hess or your inclination calls you. He spoke, and 
though it was the Sabbath, and the man knew that 
it was not lawful for him to carry his bed on that 
day, yet he obeys without question or hesitation, 
see ming to recognize the presence and authority of 
a higher law, in the command of him who had made 
him whole. 

Lhe same day was the Sabbath. It was obviously 
on account of this circumstance chiefly that this 
miracle is here recorded. For of the innumerable 
miracles which he wrought John records but very 
few, and those having a marked character and 
specially pertinent to the purpose of his gospel. It 
was not that his conduct in this instance was at all 
singular, or out of the ordinary course as regarded 
his treatment of the Sabbath. For it was not. But 
in this instance special notice was taken of his con- . 
duct, and it gave rise to that remarkable discourse 
respecting his divinity and his relations to the 
Father, which John was specially desirous to repro- 
duce and introduce into his record. 

Jesus was quite as likely to work miracles on the 
Sabbath as on other days. Indeed, so far as his life 
and work were concerned, he made no difference 
among the days. But the days were not all alike to 
the Jews. They put a marked and radical differ- 
ence between them. Hence the unavoidable col- 


62 PHILOSOPHY OF 


lision,-and the bitter war they waged against him. 
Not on: this ground only. The ground was gen- 
eral ; but this uncanonical treatment of the Sabbath 
was used as the most prominent specification under 
the general accusation of disregard: to the law of 
Moses. 

10. The Fews, therefore, said to him that was cured, 
lt 1s not lawful for thee to carry thy bed. 


He was observed carrying his bed—‘“‘a mere pallet, 


which, when rolled up, made a bundle no bigger or 


heavier than a soldier’s overcoat.’ Yet that made 


no difference. Big or little, light or heavy, it was a 


burden, and must not be borne. “A Jew might 


play on the Sabbath, join a social aay crow 
hilarious, but he must not work.” 

. He answered them: He that ne me whole, 
rh same said unto me, take up thy bed and walk. 

He could not think obédience to the command of 
him who had shown such power and goodness 
could bea sin. It could appear no otherwise to him 
than as a duty, notwithstanding it was a breach of 
a Mosaic statute. He thought that one who had 
thus proved himself the Lord of nature must be 
Lord also of the Sabbath day. ; 

The Jews seem tacitly to have admitted the force 
of the argument so far as the man was concerned, 


that in a measure, at least, it furnished an excuse 


a 


LRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 63 


for his conduct, even if it did not fully justify it. 
But.they saw in it no excuse for Jesus. For what 
had he been guilty of doing? He had been guilty 
of a twofold and most aggravated breach of the 
law. He had not only broken the Sabbath himself 
by needlessly performing a cure on that day, but he 
had caused it to be broken by another person when 
there was no need of it. He might have waited 
until after the Sabbath before performing the cure, 
and the man, though cured, might have waited until 
the next day before carrying his bed. But Jesus, it- 
seems, saw no reason why the man should not be 
cured on that day, although it was the Sabbath, nor 
why, being cured, he should not use the health 
and the strength that had been conferred upon* 
him as soon as it was conferred. The power was 
given to be used and enjoyed on all days alike. In 
fact, there was no violation of any. divine law in the 
case either by Jesus orthe man. Inthepresence of 
Jesus, and in the face of his work and his word, 
there was no Sabbath. The institution was virtually 
abolished.* Then and there and thenceforth it ex- 


' * The Lord’s day and the Jewish Sabbath are not to be con- 
founded. The one is observed in commemoration of the resurrection 
of Christ on the fst day of the week, and is necessary for the purposes 
of rest from worldly toil, and Christian worship, edification, and com- 
fort. The other is an element of the system of Jewish types and 
shadows, which, having been fulfilled in Christ, has passed away. 
Matt. v. 17, 18. 


64 PHILOSOPHY OF 


isted only in the minds of the Jews. In the mind 
of Jesus it had ceased to exist as authoritative over 
the consciences or the conduct of men, after he, the 
Lord of the Sabbath, had come to displace the 
shadow and replace it with the substance, which sub- 
stance He, himself, was. Compare Col. ii. 14-17; 
also Rom. xiv. 5, 6. | 

15, 16. The man departed and told the Fews that tt 
was Fesus that had made him whole. And therefore 
did the Fews persecute Fesus, and sought to slay him, 
because he had done these things on the Sabbath day. 

17. But Fesus answered them: My Father worketh 
hitherto and I (also) work (in imitation of his 
example). 

He is not an observer of days nor of seasons, 
so neither am I; as he knows no Sabbath in 
the prosecution of his work, so neither do I in 
the prosecution of mine. The Sabbath was not 
made for him, neither was it made.for me. I am 
as independent of it in my work as he is in his. 

18. Lherefore ihe Fews sought the more to kill 
him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but 
said also that God was his Father, (thus) making 

himself equal with God. 

The defense which Jesus had made, so far from 
justifying him in their view, seemed only an 
aggravation of the original offense, or seeking to © 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 65 


justify one sin by the commission of another and a 
greater one. To justify his breach of the Sabbath, 
he commits (say they) the crime of blasphemy 
against God. He does, indeed, whether it be blas- 
phemy or not, claim equality with God, so far at 
least, as this; that he equally with him is free from 
the obligations of the Jewish Sabbath, and that it 
is just as absurd for them to think of imposing 
it upon him, expecting him to regulate his conduct 
by it as it would be to think of imposing it upon 
God with the expectation that his work in nature 
and in providence would be regulated by it.s, Fle 
thus gives them distinctly to understand that he 
is as much above the jurisdiction and authority 
of their Sabbath as God himself is. That it is 
just as absurd and will prove to be quite as much 
in vain for them to throw the barrier of their Sabbath 
across the path of his working and his will, as it 
would be for them to forbid the sun to shine, and 
require nature to pause in her operations and do 
no work on that day. 

19. Then answered Fesus, and said unto them, 
Verily, veruy, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing 
of himself but what he seeth the Father do, Jor what 
things soever he doeth these also doeth the Son like- 
Wwse. 


The undercurrent of thought must be clearly 


66 PHILOSOPHY OF 


apprehended, the interior link of connection must 
be perceived, or these words will be dark and 
enigmatical to us, and criticism and explanation 
will be expended on them in vain. What, then, 
is the clue to the meaning of this verse? I an- 
swer, the Jews had charged him with making 
assumptions with regard to himself that were in 
the highest degree presumptuous and dishonorable 
to the Divine Majesty, with arrogating to himself 
divine honors and prerogatives. For to say that 
God was his Father, what was it but making 
himself equal with God? And what was that to 
them but blasphemy, repudiating as they did his 
claim of a Divine nature and origin ? ‘That 


thou being a man makest thyself equal with God,” 


was the charge which they brought against him, | 


(chap. x. 33). Now the elucidations which he gives 
on the great and awful theme of the personal re- 
lations between the Father and the Son in the God- 
head, have reference in the particular form in which 
he puts them in’ this place to the false concep- 
tions of those to whom they were addressed. He 
means that they shall know, if by words he can 
make them understand it, just how far they are 
right and how far wrong in saying that he had, 
by what He had said, made himself equal with 
God. He wished them to understand that if 


OO 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 67 


he had claimed equality with God, the nature of 
the equality intended was such as_ involved 
no dishonor to God, no blasphemy, nor any un- 
warrantable pretensions on his part. He wished 
to make it plain to them that .the equality which 
he claimed was not inconsistent with a real sub- 
ordination on his part to the person and dignity 
of his Father, and, therefore, in his answer he 
proceeds at once to make known the fact of his 
subordination and dependence, notwithstanding 
that he did the very same things and in substan- 
tially the same way in which his Father did them. 
His statement in the 17th verse, was that in work- 
ing he imitated his Father. He now proceeds 
to explain this—to show how he can work just 
as he does and do the very same things, and at 
the same time be subordinate to him in respect 
to inherent original power, dignity, and will. 
Verily I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of 
himself. We means that though he is really and 
truly God, that though he is of the substance of 
the Godhead, he is not the fountain-head of that 
organic unity of life and being which is called by 
that name—that whatever exists in him existed 
first in the order of nature in his Father, as the 
fountain-head of life, power, wisdom, will and 
authority in the Godhead—that whatever he is 


68 tT TT-OSORE Vat 


or. knows or does is by derivation from him who is 
the life-principle and fountain-head even of the 
Godhead itself. What he means, then, by say- 
ing that the Son can do nothing of himself, is, 
that though his works are his own, and in that 
_ sense truly original, yet they do not proceed from him 
as the original and ultimate source of life, power 
and wisdom. That in the absolute sense—in the 
sense of original underived wisdom and power—it 
is the Father that dwelleth in him that doeth 
the works. He says expressly that he works by 
imitation and example—that neither his ideas nor 
his power are original with him. He gives us 
plainly to understand that in the absolute sense he 
originates nothing, and is not himself original, but 
that his Father is the original of both himself 
and his works. He represents his works as a copy 
or image of the Father’s only inasmuch as they 
were the works of him who is himself the image 
of the invisible God. His works are, therefore, in 
this sense imitations; they are images of those of 
the Father, ._ 

What thenisthis? To be able himself to do what- 
soever he has seen the Father do, and to work per- 
fectly in the idea and spirit of that paternal mind? 
This power of perfect universal comprehension, in- 
sight and imitation of the infinite and Eternal 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE, 69 


Original—does any creature or any finite being 
possess it? No, the original itself is not further be- 
yond finite knowledge and power than such imita- 
tion. The Father himself is not more completely 


beyond finite power and imitation than is the Son 
in what he understands and does. And what, on 


the other hand, is this? Not to be able to do any- 
thing until he has first seen it in his Father? To 
be able of himself to originate nothing—to do 
nothing of which he has not first seen the original 
and the example in his Father? I say, what is this 
but subordination and dependence? And then to 
complete the representation, he adds most impress- 
ively, as it seems to us (20th),—F/or the Father 
loveth the Son and showeth him all things He him- 
self doeth. 

His view of the example and working of his 
Father is not a narrow, partial, or imperfect one. It 
extends over the entire field, and there is nothing 
so minute as to be beneath his notice or to escape his 
observation; nothing so vast or so profound as to be 
beyond his easy comprehension and . his perfect 
knowledge. He knows it as well as if he had him- 
self been its immediate author, and the idea and the 
plan of it had been the product of hisown mind. He 
enters with infinite ease into the uttermost depths 


of the divine mind and the divine agency as re- 


70 FHTILOSOPHY OF 


vealed in the particular works, and understands each 
work not merely as it is.in itself, as an effect, but 
as it is in the cause out of which it springs. 

Whatever in the mind of the Father exists in idea 
merely, comes forth out of the mind of the Son asa 
realized ideal. The Father loveth the Son for this 
reason, because of this perfect insight which he has 
into the designs and workings of his own mind, and 
the perfect ability he has of carrying them out into 
overt acts, and realizing them in actual works, 
which, when he looks upon them, fill his heart with 
satisfaction and delight, and he pronounces them 
to be all very good. They are good to him, be- 
cause they perfectly correspond to his own ideal, 
fully answer his design and accomplish his purpose ; 
and, besides, they seem all the more beautiful and 
good to him because they are the handiwork of his 
only-begotten and well-beloved Son. 

The Father loveth the Son because he is the per- 
fect medium through which his own ideas find their 


expression, and he loveth his own works all the 


more for the sake of the beloved medium through ~ 


which they are all wrought. This delight which he 
feels in having his own ideas thus perfectly realized, 
his own wishes thus perfectly fulfilled, causes him 
to love the Son all the more, and to show him all 


things which himself doeth. 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE, 71 


This apprehensive and imitative faculty of the 
Son, this power which he possesses of converting 
the eternal ideas into actual, concrete, living re- 
alities, is exactly commensurate with the divine 
ideals, and with the originative wisdom, power, and 
goodness of the Father. 

In the form of expression which he uses to set 
forth his own divine nature, and to assert the right 
which he has to claim divine honors without 
derogation of the rights of his Father, there is 
what, for the want of a better name, we may calla 
divine modesty. | 

His Father, he says, loves him so entirely that 
he confides everything to him, conceals nothing 
from him, opens his inmost heart fully out to him, 
and showeth him all things which himself doeth. 

See how, with a certain innate modesty and 
shrinking from self-praise, he speaks when asserting 
his own divine claims in comparison with those of 
his Father. He. prefers magnifying the Father’s 
love rather than his own divine greatness. But it 
is on account of this inherent greatness of the Son, in 
which he has no fellow, as well as on account of 
the Father's love to him, that all things are thus 
shown to him. They could not, indeed, be shown 
to any one else, because no one else would be 


capable of appreciating, or in the least of compre- 


72 PHILOSOPHY OF 


hending them, so as to imitate and realize them by 
the exercise of a creative wisdom and energy of his 
own. 

But he continues (20th verse): And will show him 
greater things than these, that ye may marvel. 

It would seem, then, that the entire field of the 
divine ideas and works are not presented to the Son 
even, in a single view, that there is even to hima 
gradual unfolding of the divine designs and works— 
that there are things which have not yet been fully 
disclosed even to him, but have, notwithstanding, 
been indicated and foreshadowed in such a way 

‘that he speaks of them as of things already within 
his knowledge. In the exercise of his earthly - 
ministry he has healed the sick and performed a 
variety of other miracles; but there are further de- 
velopments in store for them, in which he intimates 

“they may see something at which to marvel—as 
though they had not yet marveled at anything which 
he had done—had thus far in his works seen nothing 
worthy of their special wonder. They had, indeed, 
expressed astonishment at the cure of the man 
whose case is the occasion of the present discourse. 
But what was most the matter of their amazement 
was not the divine goodness and power shown in the 
cure, but the disregard of the authority and sanc- 
tions of the Sabbath. The act of healing, itself, 


LRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 73 


seemed to be looked upon by them as an altogether 
commonplace affair, hardly worth notice at all, and 
which would not have been noticed if it had not occur- 
redon the Sabbath. He forewarns them that in the 
developments of the not distant future, events are 
in store for them in which they may find something 
to engage their attention besides the day on which 
they take place or their bearing on the question of 
the supremacy and perpetuity of the Jewish polity. 
He goes on to indicate something in regard to what 
the nature of those events will be. ; 
The aim and the import of the statements and 
explanations which he here makes to the Jews ina 
practical and concrete form, when formally and con- 
cisely expressed, is this: that in the scale of uni. 
versal being, he is equal with the Father as being 
equally with him within the order of the Godhead, 
from which as from its infinite and eternal fountain- ° 
head all created life and being proceeds, and thus, 
equally with the Father, holding the supreme rank in 
the general scale of being; but while, equally with 
the Father, he has, by right of nature, his place 
within the Godhead, he is not yet equal with ‘him 
in it. 
This plainly presents a view of the nature of the 
Trinity not at all in accordance with the orthodox 
standards ; which require that the Son should not 
5 


74 PHILOSOPHY¥-OF 


only be equally with the Father within the God- 
head—but absolutely egwa/ with him in it. It is not 
sufficient that we assert that there are three per- 
sons in the Godhead; orthodoxy requires more. It 
requires that we hold not only to the three persons, 
but to their absolute coequality, both of nature and 
of rank; for it maintains that they cannot each of 
them be God without being equal in all respects to 
each other. But neither is this all that orthodoxy 


‘requires. For, if this were all, then it would seem 


¢€ 


to follow that the Godhead is a thing consist- 
ing of three exactly equal parts, and each of the 
three parts constituting it—each of the three persons 
must therefore be the third part of God. This, of 
course, is inadmissible; for the doctrine is that each 
of the three persons is the whole of God. It is 
required, therefore, that we hold, as orthodoxy does 
hold, that each of the three persons comprehends 
within himself the entire contents of the Godhead, 
the inevitable result of which is that in the three 
persons we have the Godhead ¢hree times over. In 
other words, not a trinity of persons in the one God- 
head, but a Trinity of Godheads ! 

The Godhead, therefore, cannot be conceived of as 
a monad—or as an abstract unity—or as absolutely 
one and simple in its essence, for that would be 


not to have any essence at all. Neither can it be 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 75 


conceived of as a single person, for that would be the 
direct denial of any such thing as a Trinity in any 
sense. Neithercan it be conceived of-as consisting 
of three co-equal and codrdinate persons, dividing 
the substance of the Godhead equally among them; 
nor as three persons, each comprehending in himself 
the entire substance of the Godhead, for that would 
be to make three Godheads, which is absurd, and 
contrary to the supposition, which is that there is 
but one. It remains as the only possible mode of 
conception that the Godhead be regarded as consti- 
tuting ax organic Unity of being, distinct and 
supreme over all other being, having at the same 
time, within it, as the nature of an organic Unity re- 
quires, the distinction of greater and less, of organic 
life and organic principle of life. For there can be 
no such thing as a unity of life that has not the 
principle of its life as well as of its unity within itself. 
It cannot be unztted in anything whose existence is 
outside of itself. ) 
Thus, all obscurity and all difficulty is removed 
from the declaration of our Lord, a declaration 
on which the doctrine of the Trinity is mainly 
grounded, and out of which it has grown, and 
without which, and the connected declarations, 
no such doctrine as that of the Trinity would 
have been incorporated in the standards of the 


76 PHILOSOPHY (OF; 


church. There is, according to the “view above 
given, no difficulty in understanding him when 
(John x. 30) he says: ‘I and my Father are One,” 
and (John xiv. 28) “ My Father is greater than 1;” 
we see how both these declarations can be true, and 
how all seeming inconsistency between them is 
removed. If we regard the Godhead as an organic 
unity, not as a single person or individual, but as a 
system of being having personal distinctions within 
itself, it is plain that when he says that he and his 
Father are one, he means to assert that his person and 
that of his Father constitute the unity of the divine 
nature, that the Godhead is a unity, and that he and 
his Father are equally elements in it, whilst at the 
same time he is distinct from him and subordinate 
to him. 

Generally, or generically speaking, the Father and 
the Son are one, there is no difference of nature be- 
tween them; but individually and particularly speak- 
ing, there is a difference between them; and that 
not a difference as between individuals of the same 
rank and of the same species, but a difference of 
rank, though of the same species,—the Father and 
the Son not standing in relation to each other as 
one man to another, nor as codrdinate branches 
from a common root or vine; but they are related 


to each other as the branch is related to the vine, or 


~——— oo —— 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. vay 


the individual and particular members of a species 


to their common principle or fountain-head.* 


* For the judgment and opinions of the early Greek fathers on 
this subject of the Trinity, and as showing the ideas that were en- 
tertained upon the subject in those early times ( of comparative purity 
and piety of life and of doctrine ) when men had ideas upon it, and 
when it was a living and a leading topic, and stood in the fore-front 
of Christian thought and life and doctrine, see Cudworth’s Platonic 
Christian’s Apology,—Intellectual System,—Vol. I., Book IV.—pp. 
777-804. 

I take this opportunity to add that it would be natural that the 
ordinary mind should look upon the generation of the Son in the 
same light as upon the generation of creatures, that is, not as having 
its ground in the Divine Essence just as the production of branches 
and fruit has its ground in the nature of the vine ; not conditioned 
upon any single act of the divine will, but rather preceding all such 
individual and particular acts. The Arian error lay just here: they 
could not distinguish between the act of the divine will by which 
the creature nature is brought forth, and that necessity of the divine 
Essence, independent of all particular volition, by which the Son is 
begotten out of the divine Essence, and out of a necessity of the 
divine nature as subsisting in the Father, the fountain-head of the 
Godhead, and so one with it, and the very same nature in its devel- 
oped form. Whence, then, comes the Post-Nicene conception of the 
co-equality of the persons as necessary to the real and true divinity 
and Godhead of each? There is certainly no hint of it in 
any of the discussions, or in the creed finally adopted by 
the Nicene council, unless it is contained in the term Homo- 
onsion (consubstantial), And that no such idea is contained 
in that according to the Athanasian sense, or any sense_ that 
was put upon the term by the Council, or before it, is certain. What 
the Athanasian sense was is clearly given, and by that sense and the 
similitude by which Athanasius illustrated it, that interpretation is 
excluded and rendered impossible. He compares the unity of Essence 
in the Father and the Son to the organic unity of lifein the vine and 
its branches: and the difference of rank and power between the Father 
and the Son in the Godhead, to that between the: vine and the 


( 


78 PHILOSOPHY OF 

branches in one and the same living tree, or vine. According to this, 
while the Son is one and the same in Essence with the Father, 
he isno more equal with him than the branch is equal with the vine. 
Whence, then, came the doctrine of the co-equality of the persons, and 
the idea that Christ could not be truly God unless he were in all re- 
spects the equal of the Father, and standing on an absolutely equal 
footing with him in the unity of the Godhead? It is evidently a gross - 
corruption of the true doctrine. It must -have been “ unawares and 
privily brought in” to supplement the true doctrine as it stands in the 
creed, and as it was understood and adopted by the Council. The 
result, ifnot the covert design, was to put an effectual stop to all dis- 
cussion of the main topic, andespecially to guard more effectually 
against the possibility of any foothold being ever gained for Arianism 
within the orthodox definition—to guard against the possibility of 
any Arian interpretation being put upon it in the future, and thus 
against the possibility of any future questions or disputes upon the 
thing intended by the definition. If such was the design, it must be 
confessed that it has proved a most signal and entire success, so far 
as the history of the doctrine from that time to this is concerned. 
(See Neander, Vol. II., p. 391, Note.) 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 79 


IVs 


Titles, personal and substantive, tn which Name_and 


Nature are identical : 


The Son of Man and the Good Shepherd. 


THE titles by which Christ is known in Scripture 
are numerous, and all of them more or less signifi- 
cant; but the two which he applied to himself, 
which yet can hardly be said to be applied to him 
at all by any one else, are of special significance 
with reference to his nature and the relations which 
he sustains to humanity. In fact, it is of little use 
for us to inquire as to what he may be in himself, 
or in his other relations, if we leave out of the ac- ° 


count or do not make prominent the relation which 


he sustains to us. It is in this relation only that we 
can understand or have any intelligible idea of him. 
The same is true respecting God in the general sense 
of the Godhead. If we know him at all, it must be 
practically. Asa pure abstraction, or an object of 
purely intellectual apprehension, without reference 
to our practical and experimental relations to him, 


he is in reality nothing to us, for the simple 


. 80 PITILOSOPILY OF 


reason that he is unknown to us. All ideas of God 
that are ideas or intellectual conceptions merely, 
and that do not include knowledge acquired by 
experience, are powerless in their influence upon us, 
and have, in fact, no sure foundation of even rational 
evidence to stand upon. The idea of a merely 
speculative knowledge of God that does not rest 
upon and is not derived from experience, is a mere 
dream. Without experience we are without the 
data from which alone anything like solid or tenable 
conclusions can be drawn. 

Wherefore, I say, that these titles which Jesus 
most delighted in, and which he was certain to give 
to himself when he specially wished to put us in a 
situation to understand what he was in reference to 
us, and the nature of the office which he came to 
discharge in our behalf, are of special importance, 
and deserve much more of attention and thought 
than they have ever received. Indeed, they belong 
to the data which he has himself given, and without 
which we shall be likely to fail in our attempts to 
attain to the true knowledge of Christ. In regard 
to these titles, important as they are and manifest 
as it is upon the very face of them that they con- 
tain fundamental truth, it is very surprising that 
they should have received so little attention, and 


been almost entirely overlooked by theologians in 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. QT 


the construction of their theories of the nature, the 
person, and the offices of Christ. They seem to 
have contented themselves with general and loose 
views, and even vague conjectures concerning their 
import. No one seems to have supposed that any 
important light respecting the greatest of all ques- 
tions—the relation which Christ sustains to human- 
ity—could be gained from the study of that one 
striking and altogether unique title which, above all 
others, he delighted to apply to himself when speak- 
ing of himself in his general relations, and especially 
when he had in view the relation which his nature 
sustains to ours. The consequence is that these 
titles have been passed by, or left among matters of 
‘minor or merely incidental interest, as having either 
no distinct and definite meaning at all, or at least 
none of any consequence with reference to funda- 
mental points of doctrine or to philosophic insight 
into the nature and relations of the God-man. 

The titles to which I refer, are the Son of Man and 
the Good Shepherd. 

The first is of very frequent use in the Gospels, 
and is used by Jesus himself in speaking of himself, 
much more frequently than any other. Judging 
not only from the frequency with which it occurs, 
but from its being scattered indiscriminately through- 
out the four Gospels, and as common in one as . 


5a 


82 PHILOSOPHY OF 


another of them, being therefore not at all a matter 
pertaining to the style of the particular writer, or 
depending on his particular taste or point of view; 
and being used by Jesus on all occasions and with- 
out regard to the particular subject of discourse, it 
is fair to conclude that it was often, nay, almost 
always, on his lips, and the designation which under 
all circumstances he was most apt to use in speaking 
of himself. Whatever the subject of discourse, and 
whether addressing himself to Jew or to Gentile, 
learned or unlearned, friend or foe, this was the 
name by which he almost invariably called himself; 
for the simple reason, doubtless, that it seemed most 
natural to him, and was at all times uppermost in 
his thoughts. Besides, it was no more than naturaf 
that, being so in his, he should wish to make it so 
in ours. 7 

It is worthy of remark, at the same time, that it 
was not used in speaking to or of him either by his 
disciples or the Jews, and that it scarcely occurs, if 
indeed at all, im the Apostolical Epistles. The 
truth probably is, that for the most part the term 
conveyed no definite meaning even to his disciples ; 
and seemed to them to be arbitrarily used, or in a _ 
sense too recondite or too vague for them to inquire 
into, or expect to understand at all. Besides, the 


term, from being not a proper name, but rather a 


LRINITAKIAN, DOCTRINE. 83 


general term, implying in its form something ab- 
stract and general, rather than anything personal or 
individual in its meaning, was obviously unsuitable 
as an appellative, or term of personal address, and 
could not be used as such without violence to the 
laws of thought and of speech. 

In the most general sense the use of the term is 
based upon the organic conception of the world, and 
its relations to God; but this conception long ago 
dropped out of the human mind, or at least out of its 
conventional methods and its philosophical theories ; 
and our systems of philosophy, of interpretation 
and theology, have been based upon theories of an 
altogether different sort, which have only served to 
cast darkness rather than light upon our pathway, 
and to lead us astray from the natural interpreta- 
tion of Scripture as well as of the works of God. 

This organic conception of the world, however, 
was not unknown to the fathers of philosophy-- 
Plato and Aristotle; and if one with the character 
and claims of Jesus had presented himself to them 
as not any particular man, but the Son of Man, they 
would have been at no loss to divine his meaning, 
and would inevitably have understood him as claim- 
ing to be divine and not merely human; as having 
original and creative elements in him, and not 


merely those which are creaturely. 


84 PHILOSOPHY. “OF 


The perennial freshness which still belongs to the 
works of these philosophers, is owing almost en. 
tirely to this organic mode of conceiving of the 
universe, which permeates their thinking from be- 
ginning to end. Modern thought, tired by its long 
and fruitless wanderings in the wilderness of shad- 
ows and of lawless and lifeless speculation, is turn- rae, 
ing back more and more to the old masters, and.” 
asking for the old paths. It has but to find, and 
walk and continue in them, in order to find rest to 
its soul, and fruit and satisfaction-as the result of its 
toils. When that day comes theology will become 
a new science, and the arbitrary and _ tyrannical 
dicta and decrees of councils will no longer be the 
source of our inspiration; but we shall resort to the 
same fountains of living water to which such fathers 
as Origen, Clement, and Athanasius himself re- 
sorted. ‘Then, intellect will awake from the death 
of its centuries of bondage and servility, and. theol- 
ogy as well as all other science will make progress: 
and the Church wil] be coming rapidly, in the unity 
of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, 
unto a perfect regenerate and elect humanity, unto 
the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. 
The Son of Man will then, for the first time, be en- 
throned in our philosophies and our theologies, and 


reign supreme in them as well as in our hearts.: 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 8s 


The most that has hitherto been made out by 
the commentators with reference to the significa- 
tion of the title is, that it is meant to affirm or 
imply something in relation to his humanity; ex- 
actly what, or whether anything of any particular 
consequence, they are by no means prepared to say. 
They think that it was undoubtedly intended to 
indicate, in a general and loose way, something con- 
cerning his relations to the human race. That it is 
a term by which he sought not so much to instruct 
us in regard to his nature, as to draw us near to 
him in love and confidence, and to assure us of the 
intimacy of the relation which he sustained to us, 
and the tender regard he felt for us as men. 

If it is asked what definite meaning he had, the 
answer is, of course, he could have meant no more and 
no less than to say that he was human ; or, in other 
words, that he was, as each of us is, a man. Speak- 
ing as he does, as to his humanity, he could not 
mean to say that he was any more or any less than 
a man, for, according to the assumed theories, he 
must be @ man in order to be human at all. He 
means, then, by the title to tell us that he is human, 
but that he could be in no other way than by being 
aman. A man, therefore, he- was, and that is the 
end and whole of the matter. This is the sum total 
of the light which theology has thus far cast upon 


86 PHILOSOPHY OF 


the question, the upshot of all which is, that the use 
of the term was a singular, obscure, and enigmatical 
way of saying that though related to the Father as 
his only-begotten Son, he was at the’same time to 
be looked upon and treated by us asa fellow-man, in 
all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. 

Now, this would be conclusive, and here we should 
be obliged to rest the whole matter, if it were 
indeed so (as it is not) that there is no way in which 
he could have humanity and be really and truly 
human, except by being actually, so far as his 
humanity is concerned, nothing but @ man. 

The entire mistake, the manifold darkness and 
confusion, the utter failure on the part of theology 
thus far to entertain a rational and scriptural idea of 
the humanity of Christ, has this origin. ‘This false 
philosophy respecting race and species; this fail- 
ure to reach and accept the ancient organic con- 
ception of the world; this arbitrary and baseless 
nominalism, taking the place of a rational and scrip- 
tural realism, is the fous et origo malorum, “ the dire- 
of the evils of our theology, and has made 


’ 


ful spring’ 
any rational conception either of the Godhead. or 
of the manhood—any just conception of the relation 
of the one order to the other, an impossibility. It is 
owing to this that since the Council of Nice, dark- 
ness has settled down on the doctrines of the Trin- 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 87 


ity, and of the nature and person of Christ, and 
theology (in the strict and proper”sense) has groped 
at noonday, as in the night.* 

The truth of philosophy and of Scripture is, 
that without something more than _ individual. 
and particular men there could be no_ such 
thing as what we mean by the human species. 
Without something more than the particular and 
separate members of an order, whether of plants or 
of animals, there could be no such thing as race or 
species. Without a common fountain-head out of 
which they spring, and in which they find the prin- 
ciple of their life and their unity, how do they ever 
come to exist at all? Creation is not sporadic, it is 


organic. It is not the repetition of so many separate 


*It is very surprising and deeply to be lamented, that while 
Athanasius held to the consudstantiality of the Father and the Son in 
the Godhead, and illustrated it by the similitude of the vine and its 
branches, he should yet have denied and denounced as savoring 
of Arian heresy the consubstantiality of Christ and humanity in the 
order of the Human which the similitude was used by Christ expressly 
to illustrate. Whilst thus in regard to the first he was a great light, 
leader and benefactor, in regard to the second he was a great 
misleadey and propagator and perpetuator of error, darkness and 
confusion in theology. Itis tous that Christ says, I am the vine, 
ye are the branches, and not of the Father, he is the vine and I am 
the branch,—though the illustration applies, and was doubtless 
intended to apply to both the orders: yet to the first, the Divine 
order, it is applied indirectly and by implication and analogy, whilst 
to the latter, the Human order, and the relation of Christ to men, 
in that order, it applies directly and expressly. 


88 SPT DOSOPH WY BOF 


acts, without any organic relation between them 
—without any such relation as that of original 
and copy, vine and branches, head and members 
among them. All life is systematic, not only in its 
form, but in its origin. It is so in form, because it 
is so in origin, and according to the law of its crea- 
tion. The individual in all cases, and in all the 
orders of which living nature is composed, belongs 
to a species, and there is no such thing, and there 
never was any such thing, as an individual existing 
alone before the existence of its species. Individ- 
uals are not first formed, and then species after- 
wards out of them by comparison and combination, 
or the ‘*‘ selection of the fittest.” But in the order 
of nature the species is formed first, and the individ- 
uals afterwards. There jis in all cases a common 
source and origin in nature to which they are to be 
referred, and by reference to which their common 
characteristics or specific likeness is to be explained. 
The specific principle, idea, or archetype does not 
exist separately from and subsequently to them 
(according to the doctrine of nominalism), but in 
organic union with them, and together with them 
forming the organic unity of the species, or race of 
being. Every individual has in him something more 
than his mere individuality or individual and par- 
ticular characteristics. A universal element enters 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 89 


into each particular member of a species in virtue of 
which they constitute a species, and become recog- 
nizable and known as members of such or sucha race, 
and receive the common name by which it is distin- 
guished from all other races. There is, therefore, 
in every individual of a species or member of a 
race, a race element, by which it is distinguished 
from the members of all other races, and zxdividual 
and particular elements by which it is distinguished 
from all the other individuals of its own race,—thus, 
in every particular man, there is that which belongs 
to him as a man, and which determines his race, 
and that also which distinguishes him from all other 
men, and by which he is recognized and known as 
that particular man. 

This is the realism of nature, of Scripture, and of 
the ancient philosophers, as might be abundantly 
illustrated by reference to their works. And there 
occurs in Plato a passage wherein he designs dis- 
tinctly to set forth this doctrine, which, notwith- 
standing its length, I venture to introduce. It is 
from the tenth Book of the Republic: 

‘Well, then, shall we begin as usual by bringing 
a number of individuals which have a common name 
under one form or idea?” 

“That has been our usual plan. Do you under- 
stand me?” 


GO. - PHILGSOPH ¥ Of 


2) bra oy 

“Tet us take any instance; there are beds and 
tables in the world, and many of them. Are there 
not?” 

Ce Viea | 

‘But there are only two ideas, or forms, of them ; 
one the idea of a bed, the other the idea of a table.” 

“True.” : 

“And the maker of either of them makes a table 
for our use in accordance with the idea—that is our 
’ way of speaking of this and similar instances--but 
he does not make ae ideas themselves? ”’ 

“Certainly not.’ 

“And there is another artist—I should lies to 
know what you would say of him.” 

“Who is he?”’ 

‘One who is the maker of all the works of all 
other workmen!”’ 

“What an extraordinary man!” 

‘Wait a little, and there will be more reason for 
your saying that.’ For this is he who makes not 
only vessels of every kind; but plants and animals, 
himself and all other things—the earth and heaven, 
and the things which are in heaven or under the 
earth; he makes the gods also.” 

‘“He must be a rare master of his art.” 

‘Oh! you are unbelieving, are you? Do you 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. QI 


mean that there is no such maker or creator, or that _ 
in one sense there might be a maker of all these 
things but not in another? Do you not see that 
there is a way in which you could make them your- 
melie- 7 

“What is this way? ”’ 

‘“An easy way enough ; or rather there are many 
ways in which the feat might be accomplished ; 
none quicker than that of turning a mirror round 
and round, and catching the sun and the heavens 
and the earth and yourself, and other animals and 
plants, and all the other creatures of art as well as 
~ nature, in the mirror.”’ ‘ 

“Yes,” he said, ‘“‘but that is an appearance only.” 

‘Very good,” I said; “you are coming to the 
point now; and the painter, as I conceive, is just a 
creator of this sort—is he not?” 

“"That.is true.” , 

‘But then, I suppose, you will say that what he 
creates is untrue. And yet there is a sense in which 
the painter also creates a bed.” : 

“Ves,” he said, “ but not a real bed. And what of 
the maker of the bed? Were you not saying that 
he does not make the idea, which, according to our 
view, is the essence of the bed, but only a particular 
bed ?”’ 

“Yes, I did say that’ 


Q2 Pid OSOLAYaeOr 


‘Then, if he does not make that which exists he 
cannot make true existence, but only some sem- 
blance of existence; and if any one were to say 
that the work’ of the maker of the bed, or of any 
other workman has real existence, he could hardly 
be supposed to be speaking the truth. At any rate,’’ 
he replied, “‘ philosophers would say that he was not 
speaking the truth. Can we wonder, then, that 
there is an indistinctness about his work, too, when 
compared with truth?” 

“No, indeed.” 

“Suppose that we inquire into the nature of this 
imitator, as seen in the examples given?” 

“Tityou pleasert 

‘Well, then, here are three beds . one is natural 
[the species] which, as I think that we may say, is 
made by God. No one else can be the maker.” 


“ENS \ 

“There is another, which is the work of the car- 
penter?”’ 

eS 


“And the work of the painter is a third ?”’ 

PVG» 

‘Beds, then, are of three kinds, and there are 
three artists who superintend them ; God, the maker 
of the bed, and the painter.”’ 


‘““Yes; there are three of them.” 


ITRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 93 


‘* God—whether from choice or from necessity— 
made ove bed, and only one ; two or more such ideal 
beds, neither ever have been or ever will be made 
by God.”’ 

“Why is that?” 

‘‘ Because, even if he had made but fwo, still a 
third would appear behind them in which the idea 
of both of them would be contained, and that would 
be the ideal bed and not the two others.” 

Sav ely tre, .shersaid. 

“God knew this, and he desired to be the real 
maker of a real bed, and not a particular maker of a 
particular bed, and therefore in nature he created 
one bed only.” [In other words, God does not di- 
rectly create. the individuals of a species; but he is 
the author of the ideal from out of which they all 
spring. | 

This is the true theory of race and species, and 
furnishes the means for the settlement of the ques- 
tion respecting the relation which Christ sustains 
to humanity. It shows the possibility of his belong- 
ing to humanity, and being in the most vital and 
eminent sense human, without being any particular 
man. He is, according to the illustration of Plato, 
that species or fountain-head, out of which all par- 
ticular men spring. 


If, in order that there may be such a thing as the 


94 PHILOSOPHY: OF 


human race it is necessary that there should be 
something besides the aggregate of individual and 
particular men, may not Christ be that something be- 
sides? If, in every man, along with his individual 
element, there must be also an universal race-ele- 
ment by the possession of which he is constituted 
human, may not Christ be that universal element— 
that tn every man in virtue of which he ts a man ? 
This, beyond doubt, furnishes the key to the inter- 
pretation of the title the Son of Man. It means 
humanity, not in its individual members, but in its 
root. He means by it to say to us, / am the prin- 
ciple of your humanity, or your humanity in its prin-— 
ciple—I am the vine, ye are the branches. What is 
meant, then, when it is maintained that he is human 
and yet not @ man, is that he is the root, and not 
one of the branches of our humanity. 

Of that race of which we ourselves are particular 
members merely, he is the universal and root ele- 
ment. Of that of which we are only the particular 
and successive manifestations in time, he is the 
original and eternal principle and fountain-head, 
Fesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. 

No mere nominalism in philosophy can enter into 
the conception of the unity of the race in Christ. 
The principle of species is no generalized abstrac- 
tion, the production of our own minds, and found 


ed 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 95 


necessary for the purposes of order and distinctness 
in our conceptions. It is not an arrangement which 
we make for our own convenience, for the purposes 
of classification and system; nor is it a mere sub- 
jective necessity imposed upon us by the inherent 
laws of thought in our own minds. It is no unzver- 
salia post rem (to use the formula of the schools), as 
the nominalists claim; but-uzzversalia ante rem, et 
im re, according to the realism of nature and of true 
_philosophy.* We must regard Christ in his relation 
to humanity as that universal—that principle of 
unity which is at the same time the source and prin- 
ciple of life and being. Without Christ, as the uni- 
versal element in humanity, existing first and before 
the foundation of the world as its eternal, original, 
and first principle, the existence of any such thing 
as the human race is inconceivable and manifestly 
impossible. It is not merely a creator that is 
needed, but a creator who enters as the principle 
of life and of unity into the race which he creates 
and makes it a species and a living and organic 
unity. It is not, then, in the sense of any abstrac- 
tion or mere subjective construction, the necessary 
fruit and condition of our own thinking, that Christ 


calls himself the Son of Man, but in a sense the 


* See Uberweg’s History of Philosophy, Vol. L., p. 366, $$ 91, 92. 


. 


g6 PHILOSOPILY OF 


most original, the most real—independent of time 
and of all fruits, or modes, or laws, or necessities of 
our thinking. It is not-a form or a condition of our 
thought merely, but of our very existence. It is not 
that we cannot think except in that way and upon 
that hypothesis, but that it is owing to that that 
we exist, and that there is any such thing as the 
human mind or the human race at all. 

The article “the” which is inseparable from the 
title, and an integral part of it, grammatically speak- 
ing, makes it impossible to use it as an appella- 
tive. We cannot address an individual as the Son 
of man—or as ¢e man. If, therefore, the disciples 
had used the title in addressing him, they would 
have been obliged to drop the article, and to say: 
“Son of man” or “man ”’—a change entirely inad- 
missible, as being nothing short of a radical perver- 
sion, and the use of a liberty for which there was 
no warrant or excuse in the term as Christ used it. 
“Son of man” is an address used in the Old Testa- 
ment, and as thereyused is personal and appropriate, 
and means no more than we mean by the term 
“man” in addressing an individual. But the dis- 
ciples never addressed their Lord in this way. It 
would have been a freedom which they had neither 
any right or disposition to use. It would have 


been positively disrespectful as used towards one so 


LRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 97 


much their superior, and would have done violence 
to the feelings of instinctive reverence and awe with 
which they regarded him. Furthermore, in writing 
of him, the apostles do not use the title. The only 
exception is in the Apocalypse, where John sees 
“ One that was like the Son of man.” The majesty 
and glory of his appearance correspond to and recall 
that indefinable and awful sense of something really 
human yet above humanity, that was conveyed to 
the mind of the apostle when in the days of his 
flesh he was accustomed to hear him speak of him- 
self as the Son of man. Of course this which the 
apostle adopted in the apocalyptic vision would be a 
usage unsuitable entirely to sober prose, or ordinary 
didactic discourse, where we deal with the literal 
conceptions of the understanding and not with the 
ecstasies of feeling, or high-wrought creations of 
the prophetic or poetic imagination. The term the 
Son of man is didactic, and gives not so much the 
literal name, as the theory and philosophical signifi- 
cance of the object to which it is applied. This 
is sufficient to account for the absence of the term 
from the ordinary apostolic writings. It was not 
that even after the gift of the Spirit, they did not 
understand it, but that they chose to convey their 
ideas of the nature and person of Christ in other 


language. The use of: the phrase in doctrinal dis- 


6 


08 ° PHILOSGREHY OF 


course, as Christ used it, would have led them into 
a field of explanation and philosophical analysis 
and disquisition which it was foreign from their 
purpose to enter. 

But this is no excuse for theologians whose pro- 
fessed object is to do just what it would have been 
inconsistent with the nature of the apostolic office 
to have done, viz., to unfold philosophical relations 
and distinctions, and build up systems of doctrine 
upon grounds of philosophical reason and necessity. 
I am not aware, however, that any theologian has 
attempted to unfold or even ventured so far as to 
indicate the philosophical principle which may be 
supposed to underlie this title, the Son of man, 
frequently as Christ used it, and fond as he evi- 
dently was of applying it to himself. It is evident 
that he, at least, saw something specially and deeply 
significant in it, and something which strongly en- 
deared and recommended it to him. It is evident 
that better than any other within the compass of 
Jewish speech, tt answered his own unclouded, 
uppermost, and most impressive idea of himself, as 
he stood related to that human nature in the midst 
of which he tabernacled, and whose flesh he had 
taken upon him. ‘To our minds there may be 
something vague in it, and it may fail, unaccus- 


tomed as we are to the idioms of the language in 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 99 


which he spake, to convey any clear or distinct 
meaning, or to make any deep impression upon our 
hearts. But it was not so with him. He did not 
use terms which he did not understand ; not of 
whose fitness he stood in any doubt. Whatever 
language had to meet his wants, to express his 
ideas, was at his ready command, and offered it- 
self spontaneously to him as his willing and obedi- 
ent servitor. He used the term, therefore, because 
of all the terms which the language of his time and, 
nation afforded, it was the one best fitted to his 
purpose, and most accurately expressive of the rela- 
tion in which by nature he stood to mankind, and 
the one which, when they should come to under- 
stand it, would convey to them more light in regard 
to his essential nature and the mutual relations be- 
tween him and them than any other. He who 
knew so well what was in man, knew also quite as 
well that there was nothing in the term to render 
it unintelligible to the human mind, when once that 
mind should have gained the true point of view 
with reference to it. It is nothing but a false phi- 
losophy—the inveterately strong hold which false 
and mechanical ideas of the relations between God 
and the universe have taken and do naturally take— 
that has kept the Christian world so long in dark- 
ness on this cardinal point, and made that most 


100 PHILOSOPHY OF 


profound and significant title the “ Son of man,” as 
applied by Christ to himself, so long a root out of a 
dry ground—an enigma and a stumbling-block to 
the modern theological mind. 

Such, then, is the philosophy of scripture and 
of nature upon this vital point of Christian doctrine. 
Such an element as the Son of man must there be 
in human nature in order that there may be any 
such thing as human nature in the creation at all. 
This human that is not particular nor individual, 
nor created, must there be in humanity in order that 
there may be any such thing as a race bearing that 
name and possessing those attributes. And since 
the race unquestionably exists, and such a thing as 
that uncreated universal must have existed and 
must exist as the conditio sine qua non of its exist- 
ence, it follows that sucha thing is, and that Christ, 
who calls himself the Son of Man, is that thing,— 
that original, eternal source and model of our per- 
sonal and individual humanity. But whence this 
term? Do the words on their very face, and in their 
most obvious sense, convey that idea? They do 
not. The term “Son” does not by itself and on the - 
face’of it, carry the idea of source or origin, or of the 
universal, the genetic, or the generic. But notice 
that it is not to be taken by itself, but in its connec- 


tion in the phrase, as an integral and modifying ele- 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 101 


ment of it asa whole. Notice, also, that the term 
‘‘ Man,” which follows it, is not preceded by the in- 
definite article. It is not the Son of a Man that he 
calls himself, as though he were the only son of 
some particular man, nor a son of a man, which is no 
more than every other man might say of himself, 
and yet convey no meaning at all, except an empty 
truism. But if, in the ordinary sense, he were a son 
at all, he must be the son of some particular man— 
not of mankind in general. But it is of man in gen- 
eral, and not-of any particular man, that he is said 
to be the Son. But it is impossible that in the 
sense of a descendant of humanity he should be de- 
scended from mankind in general, and not from any. 
particular man. He could not get into the race in 
any such general way as that. There is but one 
way of getting in, and that is by descent from some 
particular man who is his natural and actual father. 
The door into the race is a particular and concrete, 
and not an abstract and general one. To say that 
he isa child of the race, yet not of any particular 
member of it, is simply to talk nonsense. But if he 
were a descendant in the natural and only possible 


’ 


sense, the article ‘“‘the’’ would not be applied to 
him. He would, like any other man, be ason. It 
is not possible, the laws of language do not permit, 


it is not within the possibilities of rational speech, 


102 PHILOSOPHY OF 


to call any man ¢he son of man. It is obvious, there- 
fore, that in calling himself such he-meant to deny 
that he was a man. He could not more emphati- 
cally have denied his human origin than he did .by 
calling himself by this title, unless he meant to set 
all usage at defiance and use words in utter disre- 
| gard of any known sense or acceptation. How per- 
fectly preposterous, then, it is, to say that what he 
meant by the phrase in question to affirm is just that 
which according to its necessary constructionand only 
possible acceptation, he must have meant to deny. 
The sense of a human origin or descent from the 
race by any sort of generation, natural or super- 
natural, cannot by any possibility be extracted or 
extorted from the words. ; 
Whence, then, the origin of the phrase, and why 
is it used to express the sense which we have given 
it, and which, in the nature of things, it is necessary 
to give it? I answer, that it is a Hebrew idiom. It 
is a form of expression used in the Old Testament 
to express humanity in the generic sense, and means 
the same as and is equivalent to the term “ man” 
in the general sense. It is, then, a.generic term. 
borrowed from the Hebrew, to express “man” or 
“humanity.” But the idea of humanity has two as- 
pects, according to the point of view from which it 
is regarded. It can be viewed in the light of its 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 103 


generic principle, or in that of its particular mani- 
festations or products,—in the light of its organic 
spirit and life principle, or of its body, consisting of 
the organized aggregate of its members,—in the light 
‘of its root or of its branches,—in the light of the 
particular individuals which, taken together, make 
up its outward species, or of the universal element 
underlying, entering into, and uniting them all into 
the unity of a distinct race. 

It is in this latter sense—that of the universal and 
creative principle—that Christ calls himself ‘ human- 
tyes 


sense, and saying I am san—humanity itself, whilst 


Instead pf using the word man in the generic 


you are only men partaking of humanity, he uses the 
equivalent, more expanded and softer term, and dis- 
tinguishes himself from us, and indicates his generic 
relations by calling himself the Sou of Man. A 
marked instance of this use of the phrase in the Old 
Testament, and one, too, of which particular notice 
has been taken by St. Paul, and to which a marked 
theological sionificance has been assigned by him, is 
found in the eighth Psalm: “ What 1s man,” the 
Psalmist exclaims, ‘ that thou art mindful of him, or 
the Son of man, that thou visitest him?” The 
Apostle argues (Heb. 2) that these words contain a 
reference to Christ, and maintains that by the term 


the Son of man here Christ is meant, and he goes on 


104. 7 PHILOSOPAY “OF 


to prove the point by comparing the different parts 
of the Psalm with each other, and showing that as a 
whole the Psalm has its fulfillment in him, and can- 
not be interpreted without reference to -him, nor 
without understanding the term the Sox of man as 
meaning him. 

The Psalmist says of the Son of man (5th verse), 
Thou hast crowned him with glory and_ honor, 
(6th), Thou madest him to have dominion over the 
works of thy hand, thou hast put a// things under 
his feet. But (the apostle rejoins) we do not see yet 
all things put underhim. Wedo not, that is, see the 
human race occupying a position of supreme dominion 
over the whole creation; on the contrary, the posi- 
tion of man with reference to the lower creation is 
to a great extent one of subjection and bondage— 
he is the slave rather than the master of his circum- 
stances. How, then, he asks, is an explanation of 
these words in accordance with the facts in the case 
possible? His answer is, we have the explanation 
of the words, the ,;removal of the seeming contra- 
diction, if we consider Jesus to have been actually 
intended, or humanity in the person of Jesus—by 
the term, man, or the Son of man. For, he says, 
we do see Jesus, who was made a little lower than- 
the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with 
glory and honor, that he by the grace of God should. 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 105 


taste death for every man. Man considered in his 
individual capacity, and meaning the aggregate of 
the individuals of the species, seems to be in a low 
and servile condition, and wholly unworthy of rank- 
ing as the undisputed and glorious sovereign of the 
universe. 

In comparison with the Heavens, the work of the 
divine fingers, the moon and the stars which God 
has ordained, he seems the most transitory, trivial, 
and insignificant of creatures, and wholly unworthy 
of notice in comparison with the grand displays of 
the glory of the creation in the heavens above ; 
but not so when he is considered as in the person 
of the Son of man, whom the Father has appointed 
heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds, 
who being the brightness of his glory and the ex- 
press image of his person, and upholding all things 
by the word of his power ; when he had by himself 
purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the 
majesty on high, and to whom it is said: And thou, 
Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of 
the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine 
hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest, and 
they all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a 
vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be 
changed; but thou art the same, and thy years 
shall not fail. ‘ 

6¥ 


106 PHILOSOPHY OF 


We have reached the point proposed. The ques- 
tion what is the significance of the title, the Son of 
man, so absolutely unique, as a personal designation 
without precedent, without resemblance, almost 
without analogy in the nomenclature of thought or 
of things—but yet so manifestly the favorite of our 
Lord himself, and applied by himself to himself by 
evident and strong partiality—the question has re- 
ceived its answer. Within the scope of human 
thought or inquiry, there is no greater one, and the 
attainment of the point of view from which we are 
“able to give it a clear and satisfactory answer is one 
of the greatest, certainly one of the most fruitful 
within the reach of our faculties. For it presents 
the substance underlying the greatest of all the 
names by which the Incarnate Deity can be known, 
the light in which he is brought most nearly home 
to our practical thoughts and apprehensions, the re- 
ality in the light of which he most loved to contem- 
plate himself, and most desired to have us contem- 
plate him. 

‘Fhis, the reaching of the requisite intellectual 
and moral points of views from which to understand 
him, he knew could be accomplished only by edu- 
cation—which he also knew would require much 
thought, time, and experience; the experience which 
comes only from thought and time, and the thought - 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 107 


which can come only as the fruit of time and expe- 
rience. We must, he knew, have time to escape 
the fallacies and the frauds of the outward senses— 
of the sensuous imagination—of the carnal under- 
standing (the faculty judging according to sense), 
and above all the snares of education and tradition, 
and of philosophy falsely so called—the snares of an 
empty, lifeless, plausible nominalism. We must by 
the power of thought, and as the result of training 
in the school of experience and of Christ, come at 
length to the reality which the mind instinctively 
craves, and short of which it cannot rest—no mere 
subjective reality, its own creation toSupply its own 
want, and which it imposes upon itself as objectively 
real, when in fact there is no such reality—no being 
answering to the title, the Son of man, except in 
our own thought, no universal element in humanity 
answering to the universal in our thought. We 
must, I say, come not to the subjective universal 
merely, but to that which is the objectively ‘real— 
which answers to the necessary form of thought, 
and this is found only in him who calls himself the 
Son of man. 
May we not say that here the goal of thought is 
reached, the point beyond which it cannot. go—and 
arrived at which it has no need to go any further? 


What is the uttermost limit to which thought can 


108 PHILOSOPHY OF 


attain? the most advanced, the most fundamental 
and universal position possible for the thought to 
occupy? I answer, when it becomes not indeed 
identical with its object, but its actual well-defined 
counterpart. Say not that where such mental 
shadow exists there is no corresponding outward 
reality! but that the shadow is all, and the corre- 
sponding outward merely a projection of the inward, 
the result of the imaginative faculty. Account if 
you can for the shadow without an object to cast it. 
Just so certain as the reality of the “shadow, SO cer- 
tain is the existence somewhere objectively of the 
substance thatecasts it. Though it be but a shadow, - 
it just as much needs to be accounted for as though 
it were.a substance, and can no more exist without a 
corresponding substance than substance that casts 
no shadow. It is enough that the thought reflects 
the object, and that it is the exact image of its 
original. 

In this conception of Christ, as the principle of 
our humanity, the universal in that organic unity of 
which we are the particular members (the particular 
involving the universal as that without which it has 
itself no significance, no function, no place, and xo 
existence), in this conception of Christ as the Son of 
man, we have the organic conception of humanity, 
we have the key to the solution of all the problems, 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 109 


not of redemption merely, but of history and phi- 
losophy also. In the attributes of that fundamental 
organic idea, we have reflected all the attributes 
and all the functions of the God-man, mediator, and 
medium between the Godhead and man. 

Does the church of the living God, out of the pro- 
foundest and most universal instincts of her faith 
and her love, out of the inmost necessity of her own 
thought, feeling, and experience, hold him to be 
divine! Does she find her God, her head and her 
life in him, and worship him as her only Lord, and 
does she find it impossible to be true to herself and 
not do it? 

Is it impossible for her not to make him head over 
all things and fountain-head of life and peace to her, 
and do we not, in this view of the relation in which 
Christ stands to humanity, find the ground upon 
which that inherent faith and necessity of hers rest? 
Is he not, as the principle of our humanity, necessa- 
rily divine? Can he be that and not be God? Can 
humanity have its eternal source and fountain-head 
—its substance and its principle—in that which is it- 
self merely human or creaturely, and in no respect 
transcending the creature nature? If we understand 
ourselves, we mean and can mean by the term “ our 
God” not anything outside of or other than our hu- 


manity, nothing that does not in some way come 


LIO PHILOSOPHY OF 


within the sphere of our nature, our actual and im- 
mediate knowledge and experience. Nothing that 
does not come within the sphere of our nature— 
nothing between us and which there is no communion 
of nature, and which has nothing in common with us in 
respect to nature, can be the possible object or mat- 
ter of our experience. If “ our God” comes within 
the limits of our experience and can be known to us 
only by experience (and there is no other way in 
which we can know him), then of necessity his nature 
in some way comes within the sphere of ours, and 
there is a community of nature between him and 
us. At least there is necessarily something in com- 
mon between his nature and ours implied in the 
fact that we know and love him, and that he is to 
us naturally and truly our God. 

To this conclusion let us hold fast, as to the sheet- 
anchor of our hope and the lode-star of our faith fn 
theology as well as in philosophy. It is a conclu-. 
sion from which there is no escape, except into 
doubt, prescription, nominalism, mechanism, materi- 
alism and intellectual death. It is so that we stand 
related to God and him to us, or else God is really 
and virtually no God to us (or which is the same 
thing in effect), a God of whom we know and can 
know nothing. The one point necessary to guard, 


and where the only danger lies, is that the proper | 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. DEY 


distinction be observed and the identity not carried 
too far. As earnestly as we affirm that he has a na- 
ture in common with ours, so earnestly do we deny 
that he is a man. He ts not one of us, and yet he ts 
ail of us and all there is of us, except our tmper- 
fections and our sins. He is the principle of the hu- 
manity of every one of us, that in every one in virtue 
of the possession of which we are men ; without him, 
as the universal in our nature, not one of us, though 
in the human form, would be a man. Nothing is 
more certain than this: that if we as men, as_a race, 
had not by nature something. in common with 
each other, we could not love, enter into sympathy 
with, or even know each other internally at all. /fwe 
had not all of us one human heart, we should all be 
strangers to each other, and as destitute of interest 
in or sympathy with each other, as we are with the 
beasts that perish, or they with us. 

: Imagine the chasm, as to all that endears us to 
each other and ennobles us in our own sight and 
that of our fellows, that exists between our minds, 
our experience, our consciousness as men, and that. 
of the brutes: try to conceive the chasm which dif- 
ference of nature makes in these respects, and you 
have the chasm which would yawn between God 
and us, the impossibility there would be. of our 


knowing and loving him and making him our God 


112 PHILOSOPHY OF 


as we do, if there were nothing in common between 
his nature and ours. 

Here is the point where the second title, 7 am the 
Good Shepherd, comes first into view. The first of 
these titles furnishes the key to the explanation of 
the other. The second limits the application of the 
first, and reduces it to a concrete and practical form. 
The second, as the minor term carries the first as its 
major in its bosom, comprehends it under its more 
limited and special significance. 

Lam the Good Shepherd and know my sheep, and 
am known of mine; even as the Father knoweth me, and 
I know the Father, even so do I know my sheep, and 
they me, John x. 14, 15. 

The same relations of knowledge and affection, — 
of knowledge implying affection and affection imply- 
ing knowledge, as those which exist between the 
Father and the Son in the Godhead, exist between 
Christ and his people in the manhood. And the 
great question is, as to what is.implied in this com- 
mon and mutual understanding and affection which 
subsists alike between the Father and the Son on 
the one hand, and between Christ and his people— 
the good shepherd and his sheep—on the other. 

We cannot too strongly emphasize the second 
clause in the verse containing the title, or the title 
which he gives to us as counterpart to that which 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 113 


he gives to himsel/—I am the good shepherd, and 
know my sheep, and am known of mine. With refer- 
ence to them he calls himself shepherd, with refer- 
ence to himself, he calls them sheep. The titles are 
not absolute,’they are correlative, and indicate office 
function and mutual relationship and interdepend- 
ence, with reference to each other. In defining him- 
self he defines us in our relation to him. He defines 
himself with reference towhat as the Son of man he 
is to us, and with reference to what none but the Son 
of man could by any possibility be to us, and he defines 
us with reference to what as men we must be and 
could be to no other than the Son of man. Notice 
the vast elevation at which he places himself above 
us and the immeasurable difference which he makes 
between himself and us. Notice the relation which 
as men, he makes us sustain to him. It is as to two 
points forcibly illustrated by the relation which the 
literal shepherd sustains to his sheep. These two | 
points are, Ist, elevation in power, office and func- 
tion above us, implying, of course, a corresponding 
inferiority and dependence on our part with reference 
to him. The 2d is correspondence and sympathy, 
mutual knowledge, attachment and affection between 
the parties, making him absolutely necessary to us, 
and us absolutely necessary to him. In the literal 


and earthly relation the shepherd is as really de- 


114 PHILOSOPHY OF 


pendent on his sheep as they on him, though not in 
all respects. He gets his livelihood from them, but 
he is not dependent on them for his life. They did 
not make him, neither, indeed, did he make them 
any more than they him. He is no more their cre- 
ator than they his. In that respect they are quite 

independent of each other. Their natures are not~ 
the same, neither have they, so far as the higher na- 
ture of the shepherd is concerned, anything in com- 
mon. /And this is the grand respect in which the 
comparison does not hold and the illustration is not 
to the point. The correspondence of the two na- 
tures is, however, so great, as to serve as an apt and. 
vivid illustration of the relation between Christ and 
us; if not as ‘to nature, yet as to function at least. 
In the literal case, the correspondence between the’ 
parties concerned is that of correlates, and is as per- 
fect as though the natures were not in reality two 
different ones, but only counterparts of one and the 
same. But Christ and his people are real counter- 
parts, the nature in both is one and the same, as he 
takes pains to prove to us by the comparison and 
analogy which at once, and without proceeding a 
step further, or allowing any other matter to inter- 
vene, he adduces. To prevent all possible misunder- 
standing, to show that, by the comparison of the 
relation between him and us to that between the 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. Lis, 


shepherd and his sheep, he means not merely re- 
semblance and correspondence between different na- 
tures, but counterparts of one and the same nature, 
he immediately adds, by way of explanation, Even 
as the Father knoweth me and I know the Father. \n 
the light of this explanation, so plain that it cannot 
be mistaken, we must either admit the community 
of nature between him and us, or deny that between 
him and his Father. But the latter we cannot do. 
We know that he means to affirm as beyond the 
possibility of doubt or question, as a first truth, Zaz 
he and his Father are one--not two natures, but 
counterpart elements of the one undivided and indi- 
visible nature of the Godhead. There is no differ- 
ence of natures in the Godhead, though there is 
difference of rank between the elements that con- 
stitute it. The same exactly holds true in refer- 
ence to the manhood which Christ and his people 
together constitute; in that Christ is to us, so far 
as nature and rank are concerned, exactly what his 
Father is to him in the Godhead. Thus the Son 
of man, who is our humanity in its principle and 
fountain-head—the very essence and substance of 
our nature, declares himself to be also the Good Shep- 
_ herd to us. In that title, the Son of man, lies the fun- 
damental and universal element and ground of an- 
other title—that of the good shepherd. 


116 | PHILOSOPHY OF 


The latter title containing. the former, what of 
good or of sweetness or joy for men is there that 
it does not contain? Well may the adjective which 
we translate good, mean also the fair and the lovely ; 
' for, if there is anything sweet for the eye of hu- 
manity to look upon, it is its own nature in the per- 
son of its divine Shepherd. What does he mean, by 
saying that he is our humanity in its first principle 
and eternal substance, but that he is the principle, 
the source and substance of all that is truly good 
and justly dear and sweet to our humanity? Can 
there be any good to us that is not comprehended 
within that? Can he be that to us, and not beto us 
the synonym of all that is beautiful and good to our 
nature? Reflect upon it: that which comes home 
to us and enters into us and feeds and nourishes 
our faculties and satisfies and gladdens our hearts 
and truly blesses our souls, can come from no foreign 
source : it must come from within. Not from our own 
souls—(it is a great mistake to think that our own 
souls can themselves be any fountain of good to us,) 
but from that which is more interior to us than our 
own souls-—from that Eternal substance and fountain- 
head of our humanity, out of which the soul and all 
that is truly human, beautiful and good, in it, springs. 
Must not the particular nature and office of the 
Good Shepherd, inasmuch as it includes within it and 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. Liz 


contains wrapped up in its meaning, the whole sub- 
stance of the universal designation, be the Epitome 
of all conceivable enduring and sincere good to the 
nature—to the mind and the heart of man—to hu- 
man nature in all respects and all possible conditions. — 
Christ, as the Good Shepherd, is in precisely the con- 
dition to be all this to man, whilst nothing else can 
be any part of it to us. The vine sustains to the 
branch precisely the relation, and isto the branch ex- 
actly that which enables it to impart to it everything 
that, as a branch, it can need, or receive, or that can 
be good for it, whilst nothing else is in any condition 
to do it any essential good. Whatever pertains to 
its life, growth, and fruitfulness comes not from within 

itself, but from the vine which is its own substance 
and the fountain-head of its life and well-being and 
beauty and goodliness. For all that is needful and 
good for it, it is shut up to its vine, but in being thus 
shut up to that, it has opened out to it in that all 
that its nature can possibly need or crave or receive 
of genuine good. Is there not ina practical and 
intelligible form, nay, in the form of actual every- 
day experience, comprehended in this latter title the 
discharge of every function, the opening out of every 
fountain, the running out of every stream of supply, 
of benefit and of blessing, that men can need or de- 


sire or conceive? In the nature of the case, no one 


118 PHILOSOPHY OF 


but he who is himself the life-principle of man’s hu- 
manity, can discharge the functions of the Good 
Shepherd to him. 

How plain it is, that in the Son of man adminis- 
tering the office and discharging the function of 
Shepherd everything is comprehended, and that 
nothing of all that man needs for time or eternity, 
for life or immortality, for wisdom, righteousness, 
sanctification or redemption, can come from any 


other quarter. 


THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 
Immortality, 


To specify in a single point (but a most compre- 
hensive one, surely ;) I mean that of our immortality, 
—rightly considered, all our good is comprehended 
in that. For without that we are nothing, and 
nothing is not anything, or of any consequence to us. 
If we are not naturally immortal—and we shall as_- 
sume that we are not—whence but from him is our 
immortality to come? To whom but him are we to 
look for the gift of it? Ifthe principle of our hu- 
manity, that in which it lives and moves and has its 
being, is not immortal, then surely, we are not, 
and there is no possibility of our ever becoming so. 


But if he in his own nature is immortal, and the very 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 119g 


principle of immortality—if he who is the very life-prin- 
ciple of our humanity is immortal, thén, surely, we—if 
we are in him—are such. If the fountain-head 1s 
immortal, the members must be; if the vine 
is immortal, then such must its branches be. If the 
Good Shepherd is not merely immortal, but immor- 
tality itself in its principle, and if the office which 
‘he has undertaken to administer towards us is that 
of giving us eternal life; that is, of administering 
himself to us, then surely we cannot fail of receiv- 
ing the boon unless there shall be some failure in 
the administration; and on that point he has taken 
particular pains to assure us. To set the matter of 
possible failure on his part to do all that he has un- 
dertaken forever at rest, and to remove all anxiety 
and every shadow of a doubt ora fear on that point. 
he uses very strong language, and in using it he. 
doubtless has this fear that may arise in our minds 
distinctly in view. “ My sheep hear my voice, and I 
know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them 
eternal life, and they shall never perish ; neither 
shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My 
Father who gave them me, is greater than all, and 
no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s 
hand.” As though there might arise a doubt of his 
power to make good the gift which he has bestowed, 


and perfectly administer the trust which he had re- 


120 PHILOSOPHY “OF 


ceived, he pledges the power of his Father. He lets 
us here, not only into his own deep and awful ear- 
nestness in reference to the execution of the trust 
~ which has been committed to him, and his own deep 
feeling on the subject of the duty he has undertaken 
to discharge, but also into the manner in which, all- 
powerful as he is, he falls back upon the power of 
his Father as being in reality the support, the 
basis, the source of his own. His own heart does 
not feel the fullness of triumphant assurance in re- 
spect to the eternal issue of his administration until 
he has fortified himself by referring the whole ques- 
tion back to his Father, and by reminding himself 
that he and his Father are identified in interest in 
regard to the grand undertaking, and that his power 


is engaged tocarry it out. This most emphatic allu- 


sion to the power of him who is the fountain-head of 


all power, even in the godhead itself, implies not only 
the existence of doubts and fears on our part, but the 
consciousness also, on his, of the existence of evil 
forces, and those;nor far off, nor without conse- 
quence, which would, if they could, prevent the carry- 
ing out of the great undertaking and thwart the 
purposes of infinite love, and deprive the sheep of 
their Shepherd, and the Shepherd of his sheep. 

It is plain that to his view there exists a hostile 
element that has already arrayed itself against his 


ws fl 
= 


Ee 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. IDE 


administration, and that will prevent its success if it 
can. And that hostile element stood there confront- 
ing him at that very moment. He saw and felt it, in 
those proud, scornful, and malignant Pharisees who 
surrounded him, and were impudently and hypocriti- 
cally clamoring for clearer and more satisfactory 
light, as if they wanted to believe but could not, for 
want of the light which they pretended that he 
might afford them if he would, but which he unfairly 
and unjustly withholds from them. He has already 
given them to understand that he knows them, and 
penetrates their evil designs—by saying to them: 
“Ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep. My 
sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they fol- 
low me—you follow me not; not for the want of clear 
and convincing evidence, but because ye are not of 
the right temper and spirit—but of the evil and 
wrong—not of the sincere, earnest, and confiding, but 
of the suspicious, the jealous, the hostile, and malig- 
nant.” I call particular attention to this feature in 
our Lord’s address, for the sake of suggesting that 
there reveals itself here an element of wrath and of 
judgment in the function of the Good Shepherd—ot 
wrath that can smite, and burn, and consume, as 
well as of love that can only warm, and cherish, and 
bless. He suggests that his office will not be found 


one of gentleness, meekness, and tenderness towards 


i 


I22 PHILOSOPHY OF 


his enemies; that it will not be foundto be to them 
what it is to his sheep—but that, as it is full of 


love and tenderness to protect, to defend, and shel- 


ter them, so will it be an office of terror and destruc- ~ 


tion to his enemies, and to whatsoever opposeth and 
exalteth itself against God in this great work of the 
Good Shepherd which he is carrying on in the world 
for the eternal salvation of his elect, and for the sake 
of which the foundations of the world were. laid. 
And here let me say that the punishments of the 
divine government are remedial, and that God does 
not puntsh for the sake of punishing. In*other words, 
that his punishments are not punishments so much 
as chastisements. When, in the case of a sinner, 
there is no longer any hope of his repentance or his 
reformation; when he has become reprobate, he is 
no longer a proper subject of punishment or of disci- 
pline. For the object of the Divine government in its 
treatment of offenders zs their profit—that they may 
become partakers of its holiness. When it is no longer 
possible that any good to them can come out of the 
chastisement, it ceases to be administered. The 
ministration is thenceforth one of wrath, which will 
be inflicted on the sinner, not for the purposes of 
vengeance, but of destruction; to put him forever out 
of the way, so that he can no longer be the source of 


evil and mischief to the universe. The result and 


- 
* a es * 
eS eS ee ee = 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 123 


the end of the Divine treatment of the enemies of 
redemption is either to destroy them or convert them 
into friends. If the latter cannot be accomplished, 
they will not be suffered to live to be the sources of 
misery and mischief; neither will they be preserved 
in being, in order that they may be punished for 
their crimes and divine justice have satisfaction in the 
torments which they suffer. Divine justice reaps no 
satisfaction from thesufferings of the wicked except 
inthe good that results to them from them. It takes 
no satisfaction in the infliction of suffering, as such, 
without reference to any gcod resulting to the suf. 
ferer from it. When his sufferings work out for him 
the peaceable fruits of righteousness, then it is 
pleased and satisfied, for then its end is gained. 
But it takes no pleasure in inflicting sufferings 
that can result in no good, and that have not 
for their object the good of the offender and the 
good of the universe through his good. Nay, 
so far from its finding any satisfaction or pleas- 
ure in such sufferings, it is contrary to its nature 
to inflict them. It is a false idea of the nature 
of the attribute to suppose it capable of any such 
thing, or of taking any delight in suffering that 
has not for its object, and is not calculated to result 
in, the good of the sinner. Hence, when all possi- 
ble remedial treatment has failed of its object, and all 


2 


124 PHILO SOL ST Ye OF: 


hope of the reformation of the evil-doer is gone, it 
does not suffer him to live that he may go on doing 
evil, nor does it preserve him in being, in order that 
it may balance the account by the infliction upon 
him of everlasting suffering ; but the operation of its 
inherent nature, as expressed and incorporated in the 
eternal and unchangeable order and nature of things, 
is such as to destroy him forever from the face of 
the world on which he is nothing but a foul blot, 
and in which there is no possibility of his reaching 
any good to himself, or being anything but a source 


of grief, and pain, and injury to others.* 


This view will serve to give a more rounded and 


adequate expression to the function of the Good 
Shepherd. It will show that he has of necessity a 
twofold function. The full discharge of his function 


* The next movement in moral materialism is to establish a scale 
of equivalents between perverse moral choice and physical suffering. 
Pain often cures ignorance, as we know, as when a child learns not 
to handle fire by burning its fingers, but it does not change the moral 
nature. Children may be whipped into obedience, but not into vir- 
tue, and it is not preténded that the penal colony of heaven has sent 
back a single reformed criminal. We hang men for our convenience 
or safety ; sometimes shoot them’for revenge. Thus, we come to 
associate the infliction of suffering with offenses as their satisfactory 
settlement—a kind of neutralization of them, as of an acid with an 
alkali, so that we feel as if a jarring moral universe would be all right, 
if only suffering enough were added to it. This scheme of chemical 
equivalents seems to me, I confess, a worse materialism than making 
protoplasm Master of Arts and Doctor of Divinity——Dr. O. W. 
Holmes, ‘“‘ Mechanism in Thought and in Morals,” p. 88. 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 125 


of love to his sheep, and to all who by any possible 
means may become his sheep, implies a function of 
consuming and annihilating wrath to all that are not 
his sheep and can never by any means be made such 
or anything but malignant and incorrigible enemies 
to him and to them. 

Such, comprehensively and concisely stated, is 
Christ to us in his office and function as the Good 
Shepherd. And certainly if the office involves all 
this, and all that is implied in this towards us, it 
must possess the most exalted interest for us, and 
be regarded by us with emotions of love and grati- 
tude, wonder and praise, such as can be awakened 
by no other object that can possibly come within 
the sphere of our rational thought or apprehension. 
Consider how impressive the view of our depend- 
ence upon him when looked at in the light of this 
shepherd function, which in reference to our immor- 
tality he discharges towards us. The sheep gets its 
support and all that belongs to the preservation, 
security, and welfare of its life from the shepherd. 
Though he is not the author of its life, yet such are 
its wants, such its situation, such its exposures and 
dangers, that without him it could scarcely survive 
a single day, so great is the dependence of the sheep 
upon the shepherd. But ours upon Christ is all 
this, and a great deal more. To him we owe the 


126° PHILOSOPHY OF 


life itself, in its principle, as well as all that belongs 
to its preservation, safety, and well being. That 
which it is his office.to preserve, it belongs also to 
his office to give. That of which he is, as the Good 
Shepherd, the preserver and benefactor, he is also, 
in virtue of the same office, the giver. Suppose 
now that we have a realizing sense of all this which 
he is to us, and of all the good to our humanity 
which is involved in the discharge of these shepherd 
functions towards us, is it any wonder that in the 
vision of his face and in the sound of his voice, 
there should be an ineffable and infinite charm ? 
Would it be any wonder if he should be to us the 
chief among ten thousand, the one altogether . 
lovely ? 

In order that among the many—the members— 
there may be any of the true beauty of humanity, 
there must be in them “ the one” who is in himself 
altogether lovely—imparting of his loveliness to them. 
The complete beauty of our humanity to our eyes, 
is in “the one;’’' its partial derivative beauty may 
be seen in individual men among its members—who 
belong to the number and rank of the many that 
constitute its body. It is the beauty of “ the one”’ 
absolutely beautiful reflected in the minds, persons, 
characters and tempers of individual men, that 


makes them dear and beautiful to us as men. 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. “127 


But as yet this second title, the Good Shepherd, 
has received only a general consideration at our 
hands. It has had no. logical or grammatical 
definition. The form of words by which it is ex- 
pressed has not been considered. But it is worthy 
of regard in this respect, and requires it in 
order that the meaning which it contains may be 
“fairly unfolded to us. Like every other formula of 
human speech, it is made up of words and their collo- 
cations and relations. It is a phrase grammatically 
constructed, and as such requires and admits of 
grammatical analysis and explanation. The title as 
constructed, consists of two elements—the good, and 
shepherd. Plainly the first as taken by itself is abso- 
lute in its signification. It excludes the idea of 
any particular good thing of its kind, and carries 
the idea that kind does not really belong to it—or 
if so, that it is alone in its kind. Thus we may read, 
and in fact we find, as the matter is analyzed, that 
we must read the words as conveying the sense of 
the Good as shepherd. By ‘the Good,” let us sup- 
pose that the absolute is meant—in other words, 
that God as the absolute and eternal good, is meant 
by the expression. Thus let us suppose that he, 
the Good, should actually become and take upon 
him the office and functions of a shepherd. And 


then’ let the question be put, what sort of a shep- 


128 PHILOSOPHY OF 


herd would he be? Could we answer that he would 
be a good shepherd? Certainly not, for that would 
be to give to him, the absolute and universal, a 
limited and relative character, and rank him only as 
co-ordinate, one among many others holding the same 
rank, and of the same kind, which would be to 
deprive him altogether of the character which we 
have supposed to belong to him, and thus make the~ 
answer false to the supposition upon which’ the 
question is founded. 

What, then, if we remain true to this supposition, 
is the only answer which could be given to the 
question, what sort of a shepherd would “‘ the Good,” 
if he should become shepherd, be? It must pre- 
clude all comparison between him and any other— 
for the absolute cannot be compared. The only 
possible answer, then, would be: He would be fhe 
good shepherd, or the Good [as| shepherd. There is 
no escape from this sense of the phrase, without a 
degradation not only of ‘‘the Good,” but also of 
Christ, and understanding him by the phrase as 
intending merely to distinguish himself in character 
from bad shepherds, or hirelings, whose own the 
sheep are not; or to rank himself among the good 
shepherds as one of them, making him thus merely 
a good shepherd instead of a bad, or merely an indi- 


vidual of the class of good ones. But this utterly 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 129 


fails to represent the idea that Christ had in his 
mind; not only so, it grossly misrepresents it, and 
conveys a sense entirely different from any that the 
language will bear or that Christ intended in giving 
himself the designation. 

This, then, we have in Christ : ‘‘the Good’’—the 
one who is God to us, and who alone can be known 
and loved by us as our God—he, the eternal life-prin- 
ciple, source and substance of our humanity: the 
Son of man coming down from the unknown height 
of his elevation above us, and drawing near to us from 
that unknown and dim distance to which our minds 
remove him from us when he is merely the object of 
speculative thought, and when experience and con- 
sciousness are not the sources whence we derive our 
knowledge of him—coming thus down and near to 
us by revealing himself in our hearts—taking to this 
end the very form of that humanity of which he is 
the eternal principle—speaking to us with man’s 
voice, in the very tones, and accents, and senti- 
ments, and feeling of that humanity of which we 
are conscious within us. In this form, heecomes and 
assumes towards us the office of shepherd to guide 
us in our darkness, to be our strength in weakness, 
our consolation in distress, our protection and de- 
fense in the midst of danger, and over all the power 


of evil. More than all, nay, all in one, to be life and 


ae 


130 PHILOSOPHY OF 


immortality, with its blessings and benefits, and with 
all the guards and guarantees which the eternal love 
and power of the Godhead can throw around them. 
Beyond and above all other conceptions, then, 
of kindness, of condescension, and of benefaction, 
this must rise in our minds. Must he not in this 
office be dear to us, the one altogether lovely, 
and comprehend in that single office all that our 
minds can conceive of as beautiful and good to our 
nature? For what is the good—the good in itself 
and absolutely—that which in itself is the sum and 
substance of all good to us, but the Son of man? 
And what to us is the Son of man but the synonym 
of all that is good—of all the good there is for.us as 
men, whether in time or eternity, in the body or out 
of the body? | 

Our humanity, be it observed, taken in the sense 
of the Son of man, does not exclude God. Nay, it 
not only includes him, but is He. We have him in 
it, and nowhere else than in it have we him whom 
with heart and understanding and appreciation we 
can call our God—in our humanity, I say, as repre- 
sented in the nature and person of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. Surely, then, when as such he assumes the 
office and function of shepherd to us he must be the 
good shepherd, such a shepherd as none but the Good 
himself taking that place and performing that func- 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 131 


tion can be. We can never in its fullness of mean- 
ing have the good shepherd until we have the Good — 
himself [as] Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. 

It is a great thing, and always matter of the sin- 
cerest joy and congratulation among men when a 
good man, as king, sovereign, or chief magistrate is 
clothed with the office of shepherd of the people. 
The gladness with which they hear his voice and 
follow in his footsteps belongs to the region of the 
profoundest, and most beautiful, and powerful of our 
sentiments. There is a something of the unspeaka- 
ble, the involuntary, the perennial about it. Itisa 
sentiment that never dies out; and though, per- 
haps, inexplicable and even contrary to our theories, 
conventions, prejudices, and traditions, and even 
worldly interests, it is nevertheless irresistible, and 
we follow it almost whether we will or no, as the 
sheep follow their shepherd when they hear his voice, 
and he knowsthem and calls them all by their names. 
But what shall we say when it is no longer a good 
man, one of themselves, tempted in all points like as 
they are, with their imperfections and ¢hezr sens of 
selfishness and narrowness, and passion and preju- 
dice to warp and bias him—when, I say, it isno longer 
‘a good man, but the Good itself—the principle of 
all goodness and all manhood in humanity, taking 
upon himself the shepherd’s charge, and ruling over 


132 PHILOSOPHY OF 


men in the interests of humanity and of goodness, 
and of these alone? 

When this guide and guardian appears and 
places himself at our head, and undertakes to 
lead us on our dark and perilous way through 
the undiscovered deeps of the eternities and the 
possibilities that lie before us; when this vision 
dawns on our souls and this light appears, our joy 
and satisfaction are deep, sincere, unutterable. We 
seem to hear a voice saying unto us, I am the light 
of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk 
in darkness, but shall have him who is himself the 
life—shall have him who is the very fountain-head 
of the life of his humanity, for his light and his 
example! (John viii. 12.) He shall have not merely 
a maxim, ora code, or a dogmatic system to walk 
by, but a fe, and that the life, not of an imperfect, 
fallible man, himself unable to walk except as some 
one guides him, but of him who is himself the life of 
all the true life, goodness, or humanity there is in 
men. The significance of this fact is greater than 
our thoughts can fully compass. 

But this we may know of it, that then we have 
realized what the apostle meant by his prayer, when 
he prayed that Christ might dwell in our hearts by 
faith—that we being rooted and grounded in love 


might be able to comprehend with all saints what is 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 133 


the breadth and length and depth and height, and to 
know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, 
that we might be filled with all the fullness of God. 
When the Good—which to us can be no other than 
the Godman—comes to execute the office of Chief 
Shepherd towards us, we are assured on the highest 
crounds of an absolutely perfect guardianship for 
man. Consider some of the elements that are in- 
volved in it: in the first place, it is God himself in a 
light and in a nature in which we can know and love 
—enter into sympathy with him and know that in 
the innermost depths and tenderest fibres of his 
own being, he is in perfect sympathy with all that 
is really human (however imperfect, or however 
darkened and defiled it may be) in us. It is not one 
nature striving to know and take an interest in and 
love another, but the same nature, with a sympathy 
for all that is even hopeful and not reprobate in 
us, that is quick, generous, tender, appreciative and 
forgiving, and which will Surely forgive to the utter- 
most, because he so loves our humanity and is so 
eager and determined to save it, and so longs that 
it may not perish, but have eternal life. It is not 
another nature which, strive as we may, must as to 
its innermost heart and feeling, be foreign and un- 
known to us, and a thing with which we can enter 


into no congenial sympathy and fellowship. There 


134 i PHILOSOPHY OF 


must be a community of nature in the case, or that 
cannot be which the apostle says is matter of fact be- 
tween God and us. That which we have seen and 
heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fel- 
lowship with us: and truly our fellowship ts with the 
Father and with his Son Fesus Christ. (1 John i. 3.) 
Thus we have for the first time the idea of our God, 
and of our being the objects of his almighty and sym- 
pathetic love and care realized to us, when we are as- 
sured by the unfailing instinct of our humanity that 
he is present with us in our nature and in our hearts 
and in that nature and in those hearts by a mysteri- 
ous yet real indwelling, exercising towards us the 
office of supreme guardian, guide and comforter 
of our souls. But consider another point, which with 
equal certainty and clearness is involved. What 
absolute security for perfect purity and distnterest- 
edness in the administration of his office—see the 
impossibility of any personal or selfish interest or 
consideration entering in and interfering to prevent 
perfect disinterestedness in the administration of 
the trust whichhas been committed to him. Talk 
you of self, or the bias or makeweight of self-inter- 
est or ambition interfering in the case to prevent the 
concentration of the whole power of the office, and 
all the ardor of the love to men which it involves 
within its idea and design, from being directed to 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. | eS 


the one end and consideration of the welfare of 
the sheep? Is there any danger or even possi- 
bility that in the administration there will be a 
thought directed to something else besides their 
good? For who are these that he calls his sheep, and 
over whom he has assumed this guardianship, posses- 
sionandcare? Arethey not men, and can he who is 
humanity have any interest that is adverse to or not 
accordant, and even identical with, that of men? 
What is humanity but the love of men ? andin loving 
and in serving them, whom but itself does it love 
and serve? Inserving them does it not in the most 
effectual, nay, in the only possible way, serve ztself ? 
What self has humanity, or what self-interest, what 
object to fasten its affections, its ambitions, or even 
its covetousness, or its pride upon, except what it 
finds in man? It has no self anywhere but what it 
finds and feels in them. It has no self in its own 
breast ewhich can come in competition for its love, 
its thought or its care, with that which it finds in the 
nature and the persons of men. They are its other 
and counterpart self—the self without—which is the 
reflex and the projection of the self within. And in 
this I am not straining a word, or playing with an 
ingenious abstraction, for the sake of making a 
point. I am only striving to say what the apostle 
has already and much better said for me. He 


136 PHILOSOPHY OF 


throws the whole matter into the most living and 
concrete form. He illustrates the relation between 
the Good Shepherd and his sheep, by the symbol of 
the marriage relation. For Christ is the head of the 
church, even as the husband is the head of the wife, 
and the interest he takes in the church is the perfec- 
tion and the divine original of that which the husband 
takes in his wife. So ought men to love their wives as 
their own bodies. (Eph. v. 23-32.) For this they 
must do in order to love them as well’as Christ loves 
his church. They ought to copy the divine original 
of marriage and abolish entirely any such thing asa 
love or an interest that can stand between them 
and the love and the devotion which they feel to 
their wives. He that loveth his wife loveth him- 
self. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but 
nourisheth and cherisheth it even as the Lord the 
church, for we are members of his body, of his flesh 
and his bones. Thus in the love of the husbgnd to 
his wife we have an example of that which is the 
only ¢rue and unselfish self-love which it is possible 
fora man -to-exeércises-*But Christassthetrie this. 
band of the church, and the love he feels towards 
her is the divine ideal of the love of the true hus- 
band to his wife; only imperfectly realized, only 
faintly reflected in the case of a merely human mar- 


ried love, when that is at its height and exists in its 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 1a 


ereatest perfection. According to this standard, 
the ideal as we have it in the love of Christ for his 
church, the only self-love which the husband as 
such knows anything about, is the love which he 
bears to his wife. If he regards himself, is solici- 
tous for what concerns his own interest, honor and 
happiness, that solicitude will be shown by the ar- 
dor and personal self-forgetfulness with which he 
lays himself out to promote her happiness, and de- 
votes himself to her protection and to the promo- 
tion of her welfare and interest, so that she may 
feel that she has the best possible guaranties and se- 
curities for ail that is dear to her as a wife and a 
woman in his love. 

I think the case is made out. If the Good Shep- 
herd is no other than our humanity itself, then the 
only self-love possible for him is the love which he 
feels towards men, the only self-znterest he-can have 
to influence him is the interest which he feels in 
them. 

Moreover, the apostle, in this illustration, dis- 
tinctly and fully indorses our interpretation of the 
title—the Good Shepherd—which is that “‘ the good”’ 
which appears in Christ exercising the office of shep- 
herd towards men is no other than our humanity 
itself in its principle; that is, in its God. For he 


says that in loving the church, he loves only what is 


138 PHILOSOPHY OF 


in reality himself; that his love to her is true, and 
yet entirely unselfish self-love ; that in loving her as 
he does he exercises the only self-love of which he is 
capable. For he has no self of his own which isa 
different thing in nature from the self which he recog- 
nizes in them, and to whose interest he devotes him- 
self, and which he embraces, and loves, and cherishes 
in his church. Here is plainly recognized again the 
great, universal, underlying principle of the organic 
unity of Christ and his church—of the Good Shep- 
herd and his flock. For, in loving his sheep he could 
not love himself and find the best and dearest realiza- 
tion of himself and of his true self-interest in them 
unless between him and them there was a community 
ofnature, and heand they togetherconstituted but one 
andthesame humanity. There could benocommunity 
of self-hood and self-interest between them if they 
were not organically one, and did not together con- 
stitute, not two natures, but only a single nature; 
that is,a dyad, consisting of two elements —the shep- 
herd and the sheep—the head and the members of 
that unity, the flock. And thus also, he declares—not 
impliedly, as in the saying, I know my sheep and am 
known of mine, even as the Father knoweth me 
and I know the Father—but he goes on in the next 
verse to say, furthermore, And other sheep I have 


which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, 


\ 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 139 


and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one 
fold, one shepherd. (John x. 16.) 
Not one fold and one shepherd. The supplying 
the conjunction destroys instead of filling out and 

more fully expressing the sense. The omission of 
the connective is intentional and significant. The 

two elements, in the absence of the connecting par- 
ticle, constitute and express an organic unity, whereas 
with the particle they represent. the fold and the 

shepherd as two not only distinct, but separate 
| things, with no organic unity between them. As the 
clause stands, and as it was intended to stand, it 
represents the shepherd and his flock as constituting 
not two single and separate things, but a Dyad, or 
an organic unity consisting of two correlative ele- 
ments or forces. One fold—one shepherd—fold and 
shepherd, not two, but one. He carries the idea 
here that whilst he is really distinct from the fold he 
is not organically separated from it, but as in nature, 
- one with it, and it one with him. 

In saying one fold, and emphasizing the one, he 
points to the unity of the flock. In adding oe shep- 
herd, he points to that which is the unitizing princi- 
ple, or to himself as the principle in and through 
which the unity of the flock is accomplished. For 
there can be no such thing as a concrete and living 


unity where there is no principle of unity. And fur- 


? 


140 PHILOSOPHY OF 


thermore the principle of such a unity cannot bea 
thing outside of and separate from it. It must be 
in the members united by it, or they cannot become 
a unity in and by means of it. There can be no 
doubt that Christ means to represent himself as the 
principle of the unity of his flock. He would and 
could not speak of them as being one and constitut- 
ing a unity in any way but in him. Such being the 
relation which he sustains to them, the foundation 
is laid in nature for the administration of the shep- 
herd-office toward them in a manner involving the 
perfection of all that can enter into the idea of the. 
discharge of sacred official duty. 

Of necessity, the office of shepherd of humanity 
must be exercised by humanity in its principle 
toward humanity zz zts members, in an absolutely 
perfect manner. We have in the nature and char- 
acter of the shepherd the pledge, and the sure 
guaranty, of an absolutely perfect discharge of all 
the functions involved, and of all the duty enjoined. 

Moreover, Christ as the Son of man—the Good 
[as the] shepherd and bishop of our souls, addresses 
himself to that which is universal in our humanity. 
In virtue of the wuzversality of his nature and 
sympathies, he is capable of doing this; but no 
other—none who does not comprehend within himself 


that which is universal in the nature of man is capable 


* 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. [4] 


of it. But in order that we may be numbered 
among his sheep that hear his voice and follow him, 
and to whom he gives eternal life, and who are 
secured by all the love and all the power of the 
eternal Godhead from ever perishing, or being 
by any power in earth or hell plucked out of 
his hand—this universal element lying at the basis 
of our humanity, and constituting its very life 
and spirit, must be developed at least in a degree 
within us, and become potential in determining our 
conduct and our feelings towards the Good Shep- 
herd when we shall hear his voice calling after us. 
It would almost seem as though it were the one 
thing needful for a man, in order that he may be 
truly a man, that he should escape from the narrow- 
ness of his education and his prejudices—throw off 
the trammels of creed and nation, and get breadth 
of ideas, views, feelings, and sympathies. He must 
be ina situation to sympathize with whatever is truly 
human in his fellow-men, and so be brought into a 
genialand generous friendship with them onthe broad 
ground of their common humanity, before he can 
be said to be himself truly a man, or the possible 
subject of the benefits of the office of the universal . 
shepherd of humanity. It would seem that the 
selfish narrownesses, preferences, and prejudices 


which belong so naturally, and cling so tenaciously 


142 PHILOSOPHY OF 


and obstinately to him, without which and without 
being more or less perverted, blended and corrupted, 
by which no man in any nation grows up to manhood 
(but with which cleaving to him and bringing him 
into bondage no man ever becomes a true man)—it 
would seem, I say, as though this natural and acquired 
selfishness and narrowness were, after all, more than 
anything else, the orzgizal sin of human nature. 
Litas ateall events, that without which our humanity 
in its original simplicity and universality is not 
developed and differentiated into the particular 
and individual form. The individualizing element 
must come forth and assert itself and its claims, but 
this it is sure to do with an undue emphasis and 
intensity. The individualizing tendency which is 
natural and necessary, carries itself to excess, and 
in that lies the evil, and the wrong, and the sin. It 
is at this point, and under the temptation that besets 
us at this initial and feeblest stage of our develop- 
ment, that the sin comes in. It lies not in the in- 
dividualizing and’ self-asserting tendency itself, but 
in the excess to which this is permitted to go—it is 
here that the false and the wrong, the unlovely’ 
and the sinful, first make their appearance—at 
this door they make their entrance. It is for this 
reason that the unalloyed sweetness, the unsullied 


brightness of our humanity is seen only in its in- 


1RINITARIAN DOCTRINE. [43 


fancy—before the developing process has begun, 
and incorporated into it any of the harsh and bitter 
fruits, any of the baser elements, any of the hard 
angularities, any of selfish and harsh antagonisms 
that make the full-grown individuality a thing so 
false and so full of ugliness that we could almost 
wish that our nature might forever remain in its in- 
fancy, in its undeveloped and characterless simplicity 
and unsullied purity, soas to reflect upon us nothing 
but that which it brings with it from heaven, nothing 
but the pure humanity, radiant with the smiles of. 
the infinite Father, which it still reflects back upon 
us from its own sweet, unconscious face when it first 
opens its eyes in wonder upon our faces. There can 
be no doubt that it was this that so touched the 
chord of Divine tenderness, and awakened the pecu- 
liar thrill of love and delight in the heart of Jesus at 
the sight of little children, and that caused him to 
take them in his arms and bless them, and to say: 
Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid 
them not, for of such ts the kingdom of heaven. And 
no doubt herein lies the explanation of the requi- 
sition which, with so much emphasis, he lays down 
upon us: That except we be converted and become as 
little children, we can in no wise enter into the king- 
dom of heaven. Nhat does he mean, but simply and © 
plainly this: that that simple and universal element 


144 PHILOSOPHY AGL 


in our humanity—the root and principle of all the 


beautiful and good—which, in the progress of our 
false development and false lives, becomes ‘over- 
loaded, suppressed and smothered, so that it can 
scarcely breathe, and so that it can scarcely be said 
that it lives, must be restored to its original and 
natural place and power? What he means to say 
is, that this hard crust of selfishness and custom 
must be broken up, and the corruptions bred of the 
strife for self, and self-will, and self-interest, ‘ ill- 
governed passions, ranklings of despite,” be purged 
out, and that we begin to look upon our fellow-men 
as our brothers and friends, and not as aliens and 
enemies—upon ours and theirs, not as mutually 
antagonistic and exclusive natures and interests, but 
as really all one in Christ Jesus, all one in virtue of 
our common humanity and common relationship to 
the Son of man, the prince and principle and the 
Saviour of our humanity, where there is neither 
Greek nor Jew, barbarian Scythian, bond or free, 
but Christ is all and in all. 

I cannot in this connection and as apropos to the 
momentous topic not handled, but merely alluded 
to, in passing, above—I mean the strange beauty 
which attaches itself to the period of infancy— 
‘when God does by himself,” without the inter- 
vention of the understanding or the reasoning 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 145 


faculties, ““seem to converse with our simplicity,” 
and our intellectual power, though undeveloped, 
seems yet to de haunted forever by the Eternal 
mind—I cannot, I say, forbear quoting a verse from 
the immortal Ode of Wordsworth, in which the 
subject is set forth with a depth of imaginative and 
philosophic insight which finds its equal nowhere in 
our own language, if, indeed, in any other. Of this 
poem Coleridge says: To the Ode on the Intima- 
tions of Immortality, from recollections of Early 
Childhood, the poet might have prefixed the lines 


which Dante addresses to one of his own Canzoni: 


‘“*O lyric song, there will be few, think I, 
Who may thy import understand aright ; 
Thou art for them, so arduous, and so high !” 


But the Ode was intended for such readers only 
as had been accustomed to watch the flux and re- 
flux of their inmost nature, to venture at times into 
the twilight realms of consciousness and. to feel a 
deep interest in modes of inmost being to which 
they know the attributes of time and space are in- 
applicable and alien, but which yet cannot be con- 
veyed save in symbols of time and space. For such 
readers the sense is sufficiently plain, and they will 
be as little disposed to charge Mr. Wordsworth with 


believing the Platonic pre-existence in the ordinary 
9 : 


146 PHILOSOPHY OF 


interpretation of the words, as I am to believe that 
Plato himself ever meant or taught it. 

To find no contradiction in the union of old and 
new, to contemplate the Ancient of Days with feel- 
ings as fresh as if they then sprang forth at his own 
fiat, this characterizes the minds that feel the riddle 
of the world and may help to unravel it! To carry 
on the feelings of childhood into the powers of man- 
hood, to combine the child’s sense of wonder and 
novelty, the appearances which every day for per- 


haps forty years had rendered familiar 


With sun and moon and stars throughout the year, 


And man and woman. 


This is the character and privilege of genius, and 
one of the marks which distinguish genius from 
talent. (The Friend, Vol. I., p. 183.) (See Reed's 
Edition of Wordsworth.) 


“ Thou whose exterior semblance doth belie 
Thy soul’s immensity : 
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep 
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind, 
That deaf and silent read’st the eternal deep, 
Haunted forever by the Eternal Mind,— | 
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest ! 
On whom those truths do rest, 


Which we are toiling all our lives to find, 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 147 


In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave ; 
Thou over whom thy Immortality 

Broods like the day, a master o’er a slave, 

A presence which is not to be put by ; 

Then little child, yet glorious in the might 

Of heaven-born freedom on thy Being’s height, 
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke 
The years to bring the inevitable yoke, 

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife, 

Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, 
And custom lie upon thee with a weight 


Heavy as frost and deep almost as life!” 


In the fourth book of the Excursion is another 
passage to substantially the same purpose, which 
from identity of thought, and even of language, in 
one or two striking instances, seems as though it 
must have been the germ of the Ode, or at least of 
much that is found in it: 


Alas! the endowment of immortal Power, 
Is matched unequally with custom, time 
And domineering faculties of sense 
In ad/ ; in most with superadded foes— 
Idle temptations—open vanities, 
Ephemeral offspring of the unblushing world ; 
And in the private regions of the mind 
Il]-governed passions, ranklings of despite, 
Immoderate wishes, pining discontent, 
Distress and care. What then remains? To seek 


Those helps, for his occasions ever near 


148 PHILOSOPHY OF 


Who lacks not will to use them ; vows renewed 
On the first motion of a holy thought, 

Vigils of contemplation ; praise and prayer ; 

A stream, which, from the fountain of the heart 


Issuing however feebly, nowhere flows 


Without access of unexpected strength.* 


. 


te | ett hth SORT a a a 


* By an obvious mistranslation the Apostle Paul is made to repre- 

sent the sin of the first man, Adam, as the cause of the sin of his 
posterity, and his death the cause of their death, whereas he teaches 
no such doctrine. His language (Rom. v. 12) rightly translated, is : 
Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world and death by 
sin (that is, his death by his sin), eve so death passes upon all men 
_ because all sin. 
* Thus the sin of Adam is represented as the pattern according to 
which all men sin. We sin and we die for our sin, not because he 
did but as he did. -As Paul in this very connection says; that we 
all sin after the similitude of Adam’s transgression—the exception 
mentioned being only an apparent one, and as such, proving the rule 
(v. 14). | | 

In regard to the interpretation to be given to the description of 
Adam’s sin in the. second and third chapters of Genesis, Coleridge 
(Aids to Reflection, pp. 241-243) writes. as follows—I quote, how- 
ever, but a few of his expressions, and these only because of the very 
great merit which they seem to meto possess, for the wealth of their 
learning, the clearness and comprehensiveness of their thought, and 
the fire of genius by which the whole mass is fused and in which it 
all glows. 

We have the assurance of Bishop Horsley that the Church of Eng- 
land does not demand the literal understanding of the document in 
the second (from verse 8) and third chapters of Genesis, as a point 
of faith, or regard a different interpretation as affecting the orthodoxy 
of the interpreter; divines of the most unexceptionable ortho- 
doxy, and the most averse to the allegorizing of Scripture history in 
general, having adopted or permitted it in this instance. 

And, indeed, no unprejudiced man can pretend to doubt that if in 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 149 


And it was that this smothered and dying princi- 
ple of our humanity might be delivered from its 
bondage and its death, that the Good, in the person 
of the Incarnate Son of man, came down from heav- 
en 7 outward form and fashion as a man, assumed 


any work of Eastern origin, he met with trees of life and of knowl- 
edge, or talking and conversable snakes : 


Luque ret signum serpentem serpere jussum, 


he would want no other proof that it was an allegory he was Yeading, 
and intended to be understood as such * oie b a It 
cannot be denied that the Mosaic narrative thus interpreted gives a 
just and faithful exposition of the birth and parentage and successive 
moments of phenomenal sin, that is, of sin as it revealsitself in time 
and as an immediate object of consciousness. And in this sense 
most truly does the Apostle assert that in Adam we all fall. Zhe 
Jirst human sinner is the adequate representative of all his successors. 
And, with no less truth may it be said that itis the same Adam that 
falls in every man, and from the same reluctance to abandon the too 
dear and undivorceable Eve, and the same Eve tempted by the same 
serpentine and perverted understanding which, formed originally to be 
the interpreter of the reason and the ministering angel of the spirit, 
is henceforth sentenced and bound over to the service of the animal 
nature, its needs and its cravings, dependent on the senses for all its 
materials, with the world of sense for its appointed sphere: Upon 
thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. 
I have elsewhere shown that as the instinct of the mere intelli- 


gence differs in degrees, not in kind and circumstantially, not essen- ~~ 


tially, from the vs vite, or vital power in the assimilative and digest- 
ive functions of the stomach, and other organs of nutrition, even so 
the understanding in itself, and distinct from the reason and con- 
science, differs in degree only from the instinct of the animal. It is 
still but @ deast of the field, though more subtle than any beast of the 
field, and therefore, in its corruption and perversion, cursed above 
any, & pregnant word, etc., etc. 


150 PHILOSOLAY OF 


the office of shepherd, guide, guardian and Saviour 
of our souls. He must, in the discharge of the 
functions of this office, address himself to that 
which is simplest and most universal in our souls— 
that is, to this principle of humanity. It is the 
only element to which he could address himself, the 
only one which would be capable of any response 
to him if he should address himself to it. 

It was the almost total death and extinction of 
this element in the Pharisaic and dominant element 
among the Jews that led them almost with one 
consent to reject him, and that made it impossible 
that they should recognize in him the Good Shep- 
herd, and consequently for him to see in them any- 
thing on account of which he could recognize them 
as his sheep. This is the,only and the sovereign 
test; and he is not timid, nor sparing in his appli- 
cation of it to them. There is nothing in the dia- 
bolic rage which the fearless, unequivocal applica- 
tion of it to them excites in them against him that 
operates in the least to deter him or make him less 
severe and pointed in his language, But ye believe 
not because ye are not of my sheep. My sheep 
hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow 
me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they 
shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them 
out of my hand. As much as to say, Your hostility 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 151° 


against me is in fact hostility against them. To the 
end that they may be without a shepherd and with- 
out a Saviour of their souls from the death that 
awaits you, you seek to kill me. You may be able 
to accomplish that, but that will not endanger their 
welfare, or deprive them of their shepherd. He 
lives still, all-powerful for their protection, after you 
have killed him, no less than though you had no 
power over the life of his body at all. In fact, it is 
only after he is slain that he enters fully upon his 
_ shepherd function and fully develops the power of 
his office, and becomes to them not prospectively 
nor by promise merely, but actually and efficaciously 
the power of an endless life. It is by his laying 
down his life for his sheep, by means of that volun- 
tary death which he suffers for them, that he ful- 
fills his creat promise and accomplishes the great 
purpose of his ministry. 

This function of the Good Shepherd is, therefore, 
not applicable to nor available for all men alike. It 
is an office of good only to those who (potentially at 
least) are good ; to those only, that is, who in their 
own moral condition and character are susceptible 
of the good which it is the province and the design 
of the office to administer. It comes as the minis- 
ter to our humanity. Where that has perished 


already, and has no longer any ear to hear or any 


152 PLHLILOSOPLILY * OF" 


heart to respond to its offer and purpose of mercy, 
it has no ministry except one of condemnation and 
wrath to perform. This is the condemnation, that _ 
light has come into the world, and men have loved 
darkness rather than light, because their deeds are 
evtl>. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, 
neither cometh to the licht lest his deeds should be 
reproved. But he that doeth truth [that has an ele- 
ment of the love of the true and the good still sur- 
viving in his heart, notwithstanding his manifold 
sins and corruptions] cometh to the light, and there- 
by makes it manifest that his deeds are wrought in 
God, [that there is a principle of righteousness at 
the bottom of them, at least of some of them—the 
desire and the purpose to come to the light is surely 
not born of evil, nor is it evil in its nature, but is 
born of good, and is in its nature good, and leads to 
good. Inthat sense it 7s wrought in God, or in other 
words, it is the fruit of God working in the heart 
and manifesting himself in the acts of the still un- 
redeemed and struggling man]. (John iii, 19-21.) 
To the help, to the inarticulate call of this oppressed 
and struggling principle Christ comes as the good 
shepherd, to it he becomes the power of an almighty 
and gracious deliverance, and the principle of an 
endless life. 


In the light of this fact, in the light of the con- 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 153 


dition of our humanity as thus revealed, we have 
the explanation of the doctrine of the new birth, 
and the answer to the question, Why zs 7¢ that we 
must be, and what is it for us to be, born again? It 
is simply the reviving to a new life of our humanity 
which has lain as though it were dead, and which 
must have died and gone beyond the reach of 
-any reviving influence if it had not been for the 
voice, and the light, and the power of the truth 
which comes to its help and restoration in Christ. 
In order that the soul may truly live, in order that 
it may hear, and see, and feel—have right under- 
standing, heart and will, and be alive once more unto 
God, through Jesus Christ our Lord—the humanity 
within it must experience a radical and effectual 
quickening. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, 
and only flesh, that only which is born of the spirit 
is spirit, that only which is rooted and grounded in 
a principle of divine love, can have any true human 
virtue or worth init. It is only through this spirit 
of love quickened into life in the heart through the 
ministration of the Good Shepherd, that we have 
any true spiritual life, anything of this life of love, 
or, which is the same thing, anything of the true 
life of our humanity, for we do not as men truly be- 
gin to live until the life of love is begun in us, and 


this beginning is the result of the new birth. 
8* 


154 PHILOSOPHY OF, 


The truth is, that in regard to the things of the 
spirit of God, we see with our hearts—in other 
words, we see nothing rightly until we see it in the 
light of a loving and a willing heart. The view we 
take of spiritual things, the light in which they ap- 
pear to us, will depend entirely upon the sort of 
affections, in other words, the sort of eyes which we 
carry in our hearts. We must, therefore, in order 
that we may catch the true tone and meaning of that 
which speaks to us in Christ, see with the eyes, feel 
with the heart of a newly and divinely-quickened 
humanity. We must have heart, eye, ear, and 
organs that have been given to us by the spirit 
living and energizing within. Only those senses and 
organs that are born of the spirit, that belong to 
the spirit, only those that are the product of the 
newly-awakened humanity within us, are truly 
spiritual, and of course it is by these only that we 
can discern spiritual things. 

The reason why the natural man does not discern 
spiritual things, and see them in their true light, is 
that he lacks the proper organ of perception with 
reference to them. And what is that proper organ? 
It is the right feeling towards the object. We sce 
in regard to such things by means of our feelings. 
Our eyes are in our hearts. In other words, the eyes 


by which we see spiritual things are the feelings with 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 155 


which we regard them. The expression may be 
regarded as a strong one, but it is not too much to 
say that our sight in respect .to things of the spirit 
is in our feelings—that they are our only organs of 
vision—nay, our only sources of light. As they are 
sO are Our views—so is our understanding and our 
faith. If our views are wrong, it is because we are 
blinded to, and prejudiced against, the truth ; either 
do not see at all or look at things in a wrong light, 
and from a wrong point of view. 

And this furnishes us with a clear interpretation 
of that pregnant and yet obscure aphorism of our 
Saviour in respect to the single and the evil eye— 
The light of the body is the eye. If, therefore, thine 
eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light, 
but if thine eye be evil thy whole body shall be full 
of darkness. If, therefore, the light that is within 
thee (if the heart that is within be an evil heart that 
hates the truth) how great is that darkness! 

The infidel theory of the religious element and 
the faith that depends upon it, is that the believer 
is deluded by his superstitious fancies—that he is 
the prey of a blind and servile credulity—that he 
sinks his understanding in his perverted, over- 
wrought and morbid feelings, that by the false 
colorings and obscuring and distorting mists that 


come from them, his understanding is blinded and his 


156 PHILOSOPHY OF 


mind deceived. The Christian theory, on the other 
hand, is that the eyes of the understanding are en- 
lightened by the power of sanctified feeling, so that 
not merely with the logical faculties—the dry light 
of the understanding, but with the very life and 
vital organs of the soul, the act of correctly seeing 
and perceiving is performed. 

Everything in our moral perceptions, as well as 
in regard to our views of outward things, depends 
upon the pout of view. Love only—as it is the 
universal and fundamental element in the life of our 
humanity—gives us that right point with reference 
to Christ. ‘‘ You must love him, ere to you he will 
seem worthy of your love.” Love alone gives you 
the eye by which to see-him. As love is the only 
right moral feeling towards him, so in love alone 
we have the right point of view from which to re- 
card him. The right point of view in reference to 
a moral subject is not local or speculative or merely 
intellectual, it is moral. It consists in the moral 
character and condition of the man. Every one 
admits that in order to right views of things, 
whether intefnal or external to the mind of the ob- 
server, everything depends upon the point from 
which they are viewed, and that to see anything 
whatever—whether it relates to the inward or out- 


ward senses--we must be rightly situated in regard 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. . E57 


to it. Now, in respect to spiritual things, charac- 
ter, or the voluntary state of the feelings and affec- 
tions, constitutes the point of view—it is as the 
character is—right character constitutes the right, 
and wrong character the wrong point. Unless, 
therefore, it is unreasonable to require a right point 
of view in reference to an object in order to a right 
view of it, it is perfectly reasonable and logical to — 
require in a man a morally good character, and an 
unsophisticated and unprejudiced state of the feel- 
ings in order to the just apprehension of Christ, and 
that right character which the right view of him re- 
quires consists in love. Love is the fundamental 
and universal element of the soul’s life. The soul 
has not its true life—it is not too much to say, in 
the strong language of the apostle, that it is dead 
in trespasses and in sins—if it have not love as the 
principle of its life. Does not the apostle say the 
very same thing, and prescribe a life and a heart of 
love in order to anything like true spiritual knowl- 
edge? Does he not say that we must be rooted 
and grounded tn love before we can expect to com- 
prehend—or be in a condition in which it is possible 
for us to comprehend with all saints, what is the 
breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to 
know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, 
that we may be filled with all the fullness of God? 


158 - PHILOSOPHY OF 


The intelligence which is necessary in order to 
know, the sensibility which is necessary in order to 
feel rightly concerning Christ, are all comprehended 
in love. Without it the soul is, with reference to 
him, unintelligent, blind, and dead. Love is the 
understanding, the imagination, and the heart of 
the soul all combined and acting as one faculty, and 
all exercised ina single act. With the faculty of 
love fully developed, and acting in its perfection 
and power, we need no faculties but what are com- 
prehended in this, and are exercised in it. When it 
is perfect and has its perfect work—with love ex- 
isting and operating in its full power within us, we 
are perfect and entire, wanting nothing. Oieethe 
truth of this view of the constitution of the human 
mind with reference to its higher relations and 
functions, we have a mighty and almost startling 
confirmation in the inspired representations of the 
Apostle John (1 John iv. 16), where he virtually de- 
clares that God himself is then most justly con- 
ceived of when He is regarded as consisting of but 
a single complex faculty—all his attributes being 
reducible to the unity of the single faculty of love. 
Beloved (1 John iv. 7, 8), let us love one another, for 
love is of God—what is that but saying, not merely 
that love comes from God, but that it is of the 
nature of God, and that just so much of love as a 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. - 159 


man has in him, therefore, just so much of the 
nature of God. Every one that loveth is born of 
God and knoweth God, for God ts love. If we have 
love we know it, in the only way in which we can 
truly know anything, and that is by. experience, and 
if we know love, we do in that knowledge know 
God. If we know love we know God, for God zs 
love. He that loveth not consequently knoweth 
not God—for he hath no means of knowing him. 
He has not, and cannot have, the experience which 
involves it, and in and by which alone we have the 
knowledge of God. 

-- Inspiration in the mind of the Apostle here rises 
to a height, and assumes an uncompromising boldness 
and disregard of the conventionalities of human 
conception,and expression that is not with reference 
to this subject found elsewhere, even in Scripture. 
It boldly ventures to define to human apprehension 
the divine being, and to reduce him within the 
limits of the actual experience and experimental 
knowledge of man. It says unequivocally, without 
circumlocution and without.a figure, that God zs love, 
and conversely with equal directness that love zs 
God. If you would know what love is—love’in its 
supreme height and perfection and power, know 
that it is no other than God himself, and that so 
much as you have of it, so much of the nature 


160 , PHILOSOPHY OF 


of God has been born and is living in you, 
and so far your soul has gone in the true 
knowledge of the nature, and of the mind, and 
feeling of God. In the feeling and state of mind of 
which you are conscious when you do truly dwell 
in the love of your kind, and when that love is the 
fundamental principle of your own life, and the 
ruling passion of your heart—in the feeling and 
state of mind of which you are then conscious, you 
enter into the consciousness of God himself; in the 
feeling which you have towards men you enter into 
the feeling of God, and know him in his feeling, 
know how he feels towards us, and towards all the 
objects and interests upon which our love fastens. 
The Apostle could not say that he that dwelleth 
in love dwelleth in God and God in him, if love were 
not virtually God—and love and God convertible 
terms—or terms which may be used the one for 
the other without altering the sense. Accordingly, 
the two propositions God is love and love is God 
are logical and substantial equivalents. God may be 
used as the predicate of love with as much propriety 
as love may be made the comprehensive predicate 
of God. » 

All the divine attributes, then, may be ascribed to 
love as the ultimate substance of being, and when 


we say that love is the original creative principle, 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE, IOI 


out of which the universe sprang, and is ever spring- 
ing—that it is infinite, cternal, self-existent, al- 
mighty, all-wise, all-beneficent and just and good, we 
declare the same truth and speak with the same 
propriety as when we say the same things of God— 
and ascribe the same attributes and agencies to 
him. 

If this be so, if God is love and nothing but what 
is comprehended in the idea and nature of love, 
then God does nothing du¢ /ove—or rather does 
nothing, and has no attribute that does not involve 
the nature of love in it. All that he does and all 
that he is, may be regarded as love acting now in 
one way and now in another, according to the sub- 
jects with reference to which he acts—manifesting it- 
self now in one attribute, and now in another ac- 
cording to the nature of the subject or the occasion. 
The entire agency and manifestation of the divine 
being may consequently be said to consist in the 
varied activities that love puts forth, the @aried 
manifestations which it makes of itself, and the mani- 
fold forms and directions in which it exerts itself 
according to the exigencies of the divine agency and 
administration. nere can, therefore, be no such 
thing as an attribute of justice in God, that is in- 
consistent with his love. Nay; that does not in- 
clude love, and is not love acting and manifesting 


162 PHILOSOPHY OF 


itself with reference to the particular matters and 
occasions with which justice is concerned. Love 
will carry out its plans and execute the all-wise and 
benevolent design in pursuance of which, and for 
the accomplishment of which, the universe was made. 
It will feel no pity, and show no mercy towards that 
which shall put itself in the way of the accomplish- 
ment of its purposes. Inregard to this the supreme 
point, love is as inflexible and inexorable as fate— 
whatever shall resist the purposes of its administra- 
tion, must either change its position or expect to 
be consumed by the breath of its mouth, and de- 
stroyed by the brightness of its coming. The sinner 
that sins and that perseveres in his sin against all 
methods and means used for his repentance and ref- 
ormation, must expect to take’ the full measure of 
his sins, he must expect to receive his wages, and 
there is nothing in the nature of love that can in- 
terfere or wish to interfere to prevent his receiv- 
ing them. Love requires that the purposes of love 
should be carried out—that which is indifferent to 
this, or that can prefer any object or interest before 
this, and not be absolutely inflexible in regard to 
this, ts not love—it is some base counterfeit that has 
usurped its name. 

To say that God is love, is to say that whatever 


vital act he performs is the act of that love which 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 163 


is the fundamental element and principle of his na- 
ture. 

To say that God is love is to say that every act 
he performs may be traced to love as its motive and 
principle—its moving and its final cause. Who can 
doubt that it is out of love that the creation.sprang 
and is evermore springing? Love, ever-living, ever- 
acting,—of course never acting without a design— 
never for the mere sake of acting, but always for the 
sake of love and for the sake of the good, which it 
is the very nature of love to seek, and which it can- 
not act but for the sake of producing and making 
actual in the condition and experience of the crea- 
tures who are the work of its hands. The object of 
the creation of which love is the cause, is to reveal 
its own nature and manifest itself to the intelligent 
universe, the heart and the mind and nature of that 
divine eternal and creative principle in which is “the 
life of our life—in whom we live and move, and 
have our being. 

In like manner, to say that humanity is love— 
that man in the uttermost root and principle of his 
being is love—that every vital and truly human act 
which a man performs, every act which in virtue and 
as the expression of his humanity he performs, is the 
act of love, grows out of it and may be reduced to 
it, and be regarded as being itself no other than love 


164 PHILOSOPHY OF 


itself in some or other of its various modes and forms 
of action and manifestation, according to circum- 
stances, and the manifold demands and occasions of 
human life. | 
Here, then, with reference to the natures of God 
and of man respectively, and their relations to each 
other, we find ourselves standing on the most fun- 
damental and radical ground. Thought, with refer- 
ence to God, can go no further than to reduce the 
idea of him to the unity of the principle and the life | 
of love, and there is no other way by which he can be 
made intelligible to our minds, or brought home so 
realizingly to our hearts. In fact, this is the only 
way in which he can become intelligible to us at all. 
God can become known and intelligible to us only 
in the form of life. To reduce him to the unity of 
an abstract principle is, in fact, to take him entirely 
out of the sphere of experience, and consequently 
of rational conception; as Aristotle says, there 7s no 
such thing as a science of the unique—of the absolute- 
ly abstract and' simple, To represent God, there- 
fore, under this ferm of conception, is to remove 
him entirely out of the sphere of objective reality, 
and of all true and living and realizing thought and 
knowledge. Hence, in reducing the idea of God 
tio the single conception of love, we reduce him not 


to the unity of a general and abstract principle, but 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 165 


to the unity of a life. This unity involves distinc- 
tion and rank of elements and of principles, but it is 
not an abstraction. 

Now love, as life, is matter not of speculation and 
abstract conception merely, but of experience,—a 
thing of which we can know nothing except as we 
feel it, even as life becomes intelligible to us only as 
it is matter of personal consciousness. 

If, then, God is love and love is life, and to be 
known only so far and in the degree in which it is 
felt by us, it follows, of necessity, that God becomes 
known to us only in our feelings, and that the heart 
is the only organ of the true knowledge of God. He 
is no object of the merely speculative understand- 
ing any more than of the outward and bodily senses. 
He is the object of the inward, moral sense, and of 
spiritual perception only. 

In the inner, spiritual sense, therefore, or, in other 
words, in the moral condition or state of the heart 
we have our only just point of view with reference 
to the knowledge of God. If our feelings towards 
him are right, that is, if we love him, then according 
to the strength and purity of our love we see him as 
he ws, and, as our love increases in purity and 
strength, our ideas become more and more clear, 
our faith more and more realizing, until in virtue of 


its love the soul comes to stand face to face with its 


166 PHILOSOPHY OF 


blessed and glorious Author. This makes clear the 
meaning of the Apostle, and reveals to us the philos- 
ophy of the soul’s knowledge of God, as he sets it 
forth in the memorable words (1 John iii. 12): Be- 
loved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet 
appear what we shall be, but we know that when he 
shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him 
as he is. Our seeing him as he is, he makes to de- 
pend upon our being like him, and our being like 
him consists in our love, for love is of the very na- 
ture of God. When, therefore, we become filled 
with his love, we are filled with his nature—we are 
full of that which is of his very nature, and so are 
changed into his very image and likeness through 
the transforming power of love. As Paul says, by 
beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, we 
are changed into the same image from one degree 
of conformity to another. When this love becomes 
the life and the vital organ of the soul, when it be- 
comes, at once, the eye with which it sees, the mind | 
and the heart with which it feels and perceives and 
knows, then the true union between God and man 
is accomplished, and thesmost blessed and glorious 
of all consummations is reached. Then the hu- 
manity, as it is in man, beholds its own divine 
counterpart and original, as it is in the Son of Man. 
Then the humanity, as it is in the finite image, 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 167 


stands face to face with itself as it is in its own di- 
vine original, Humanity, as it is in the members, 
then finds itself standing face to face with itself as it 
is in its own fountain-head. It has the most bliss- 
ful-and the most enrapturing and the most soul- 
transforming of all sights; not another humanity 
outside of, and yet co-ordinate with and like itself, 
as we stand in relation to each other, but that hu- 
manity which is itself, its own counterpart, the 
eternal source out of which it has sprung, and in 
which it lives, and moves, and has its being, and 
which, conversely, lives, and moves, and has its 
being in it. 

Let it be inquired whether there is any delight 
which the soul can experience, any perfection of 
which it can be the subject which can come into any 
comparison with, or at all resemble, or take the 
place of this, which the soul has, in thus living the 
life of love? What joy can be compared to that 
which the soul feels when thus by loving and dwell- 
ing in love it dwelleth in God and God in it? If, 
then, the life of love is a life in God, must it not, so 
far as it is such, and so far as love is its vital principle, 
be an absolutely pure, and blessed, and Godlike 
life? Is not our ideal of a perfect and blessed hu- 
manity fully realized in the experiences and attri- 
butes of such a life as this? Not until we come to 


168 PHITOSOPLAY« OF. 


look upon the matter in this light, and see in Christ 
the living and eternal spring of our humanity and of 
our joy, can we have any proper conception of the 
joy with which the soul beholds its Redeemer. 
Until then we can have no idea of the depth and 
the satisfying sweetness of meaning expressed in the 
title which, with reference to his relations to the 
soul’s satisfaction and salvation, he gives to himself— 
that of the Good Shepherd. It is not as a kind bene- 
factor, outside of us, exercising care and protection 
over us, as a parent over a child, as a paternal and 
just and wise ruler over his subjects, or a magistrate 
over the people whom he rules only to serve, not 
for the sake of being ministered unto by them, but 
for the sake of ministering to them—making himself 
their servant rather than them his. It is not as such 
‘ merely that we are to conceive of Christ in his ad- 
ministration of the office of the Good Shepherd 
towards us. It is not as an outward thing that we 
are to conceive of his administration as the shep- 
herd and bishop of our souls. The ministration of 
love and care which he performs towards us is 
primarily an inward one,—like that of the fountain 
to the stream, or that of the vine to the branch, 
which groweth out of it and has its life and fruit- 
fulness in it. 


His office is indeed to be the minister of eternal 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 169 


life and peace to our souls, but this office he can ad- 
minister to us in no other way than by himself 
becoming the fountain-head and perpetual and ex. 
haustless spring of that life and peace by his own 
actual indwelling within us, and thus becoming, not 
indeed our life, not making our life ¢dentical with 
his—for that would be no personal privilege to us— 
it would only destroy our personality and capacity 
of personal enjoyment by absorbing our persons 
in his own. 

There could be no blessedness to us in a life or in 
a blessedness which is not our own; but he be. 
comes life to us by giving and preserving to each 
of us out of his own life, as the fountain-head, 
a life of our own, and thus himself becoming the 
life of that life which is truly our own, and is, there- 
fore, sweet to us. It is thus, in administering his 
own life to us, as the source and principle of our 
lives, and making it the everlasting and holy spring 
of our lives, and of all the holiness, and all the joy 
we have in our lives, that he discharges towards us 
the office of the Good Shepherd. 

It is in this that the unique and peculiar charac- 
ter of his shepherdship consists. It is in this re- 
spect that his office differs not in degree only, but in 
kind also, from any office or ministry which men 
can discharge towards each other; I mean in the re- 


¢ 


170 PHILOSOPHY OF 


lation which the administrator sustains to that 
which he administers—the offerer to that which he 
has to offer. Among men, and within the earthly 
sanctuary or sphere of service and offering, the 
things which they who enter into that sanctuary 
bring as offerings are one thing; but the offerers or 
high-priests themselves are another, the priest and 
his offering, the magistrate and the justice that he 
administers, are not identical. But in the case of 
this high-priesthood of the Good Shepherd, the 
offerer and that which he offers, the shepherd and 
that which he administers to his sheep, are one and 
the same thing. Having nothing else to offer, there 
being in the universe nothing else which, in the na- 
ture of the case, could constitute an acceptable, 
that is, an effectual, life-giving and soul-saving offer- 
ing, he offers himself. By so much, and for this 
reason, was Jesus made the surety of a better cov- 
enant, established upon better promises. And they 
truly were many priests, because they were not suf- 
fered to continue by reason of death—but this 
great high-priest, who is not made after the law of a 
carnal commandment, but after the power of an 
endless life,—this high-priest, because he continueth 
ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood, for every 
high-priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices ; 


wherefore it is of necessity that this man have some- 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. I7I 


ewhat also to offer. But, seeing that the gift which 
he has to bring into the sanctuary as his offering 
for us is no other than eternal life to our souls, 
and seeing that he himself, the offerer, is that 
eternal life which he comes to give, it is plain that 
if he is to give us eternal life, he must give it in 
himself, that is, by giving himself for us. He must 
himself be not only the sacrificer, but the sacrifice. 
But Christ, being come a high-priest of good things to 
come by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not 
made with hands, neither by the blood of goats and 
calves, but dy hzs own blood, he entered in once into 
the holy place, having thereby to obtain, and ob- 
taining, eternal redemption for us. 

This is the record that God hath given us eternal 
life;and ‘that this Life is-in hig+Son. He, there- 
fore, that hath the Son hath Life, and he that 
hath not the Son of God hath not Life. All of 
which makes it very plain and certain that the good- 
shepherd and great high-priest of our souls can in 
no other way administer the good things which have 
been committed to him for his people, than by 
making himself the matter of the gift which he has 
to bestow—of the offering which he has to bring— 
as this life, this good thing, which God has to ad- 
minister to us through him, is 2 himself, he can in 
no other way administer it than by making himself 


172 PHILOSOPHY OF 


at once the minister andthe thing administered, at 
once the great high-priest, and the supreme and all- 
perfect, and all-sufficient sacrifice which he brings. 

The only effectual sacrifice which he can offer for 
us is himself; and the only way in which he can 
offer it is by the sacrifice of himself. 

He enters into the sanctuary, therefore, not with 
the blood of beasts, but with his own blood, which, 
being interpreted, means that through the suffering 
and self-sacrificing ministry which, in the flesh, he 
performs for us, he makes his life ours, or the means 
of life to us, or rather makes the eternal life which 
isin him the principle of an immortal and blessed 
life to us. He imparts his own life to us in such a 
way that he does not thereby himself cease to live, 
but makes his own life, while he keeps and preserves 
it to himself, the everlasting principle and spring of 
life to us. 

The spectacle of his life and of his death, when 
properly reviewed and appreciated by us, produces, 
through the superadded ministration of the Holy 
Spirit, a moral effect upon our consciences and our 
hearts, imparts a light, and fastens convictions and 
impressions upon us that cannot be resisted or 
shaken off, and that in the end become absolutely 
subduing and transforming in their effect upon our 


souls. It is thus that he lays down his life for 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 173 


his sheep, and thus that he gives unto them eternal 
life. Through the moral effect of his passion the 
humanity within them is born again, and thus is 
begotten again in them that new life of humanity 
of which he is the principle, the high-priest, and 
administrator. And, having imparted the principle, 
he secures us in the possession of it and makes it 
sure that we shall never perish, nor any power of 
hostility or hatred to him or to us, whether in this 
world or that which is to come, pluck us out of his 
hand. 

How does he accomplish this? I answer, by put- 
ting the treasure within us—into our very mind and 
heart, and thus placing it forever beyond the reach 
of any will or any power but his and our own. He 
puts it into our own hands in such a way as to make 
us, in regard to the secure possession of it, indepen- 
dent of any power or will but our own. And, 
besides, the gift is of such a nature that it must, 
under all circumstances, be esteemed and valued by 
us as absolutely above all price. And it is made to 
depend entirely upon the soul’s voluntary choice 
and consent whether it will part with it or not. 
The life which it enjoys in it is one: of perfect 
blessedness ; and can anything be conceived of that 
could prevail upon the soul once in the possession 
and enjoyment of it to make it willing to part with 


174 PHILOSOPHY OF 


it? God, on his part, cannot fail. There is no 
power in the universe that can compel or induce 
him to withdraw his everlasting and almighty love 
and protection from the soul that loves him. What 
shall we, then, say to these things? If God be for 
us, who can be against us? He that spared not his 
own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall 
he not with him also freely give us all things? 
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s 
elect 

It is God that justifieth. Who is he that con- 
demneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that 
is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, 
who also maketh intercession for us. 

It is Christ that lives; and because he lives, and 
lives in us as the sustaining principle of our life, we 
shall live also. Our immortality rests upon the 
same securities as those which make his life an 


eternal certainty. 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 175 


Vi 
iia ore Oderd tt CONTROVERSY: 


OR, 


A plain word with Prof. Tyndall on the question of 
the Origin of Life. 


IT seems to me that the Professor, in his late 
remarkable deliverance upon this subject, deserves 
the credit of having spoken plainly, and presented 
the issue between science and religion with great 
clearness and force—if they are, indeed, at issue at 
all, and that is indeed science, rightly so called, 
which, under that name, he arrays against the uni- 
versal religious instinct of mankind. We, however, 
deny that that which he thus, on this great and 
fundamental question, arrays against the instincts 
of religion is science at all, and maintain that his 
position is in fact. and can easily be aed to be, as 
unscientific as it is atheistic. 

But if they were at issue, as he boldly claims, and 
there were no alternative but to side with the one 
against the other—the fundamental position of the 
one being irreconcilable with that of the other— 


I 76 Le LLLOSOL Hamer 


then the issue between them appears to be fairly 
presented. And it is doubtless well that it is so, if 
the question is to come up and be seriously debated 
at all. In the end, no harm, but rather advantage, 
must come to the truth from the presentation, rash 
and dangerous as it may at first seem. . If the result 
shall be to make more clear to the Christian mind 
the strength of the argument upon which its cause 
and its faith rest, we shall have occasion to rejoice 
that the issue has been presented and the discussion 
_ provoked. 

As he presents the case, the difference between 
science and religion, with reference to the question 
of the origin of the organic universe, or as to the 
first principle out of which it springs, is that science 
finds all that is necessary to account for the actual 
world in the primordial atoms or molecules of 
Democritus and Epicurus. 

Upon the hypothesis of these original and ulti- 
mate atoms science bases the fact of the existing 
universe of life and being. The words in which the 
Professor lays down his great thesis are memorable: 
‘“« Prolonging the vision backward across the line of 
experimental evidence, we find in matter the promise 
and the potency of every form and quality of life.” 

The doctrine, then, is that out of this hypo- 


thetical principle or ground, which he calls matter, 


LTRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 177 


and out of these ultimate molecules or atoms, and 
the inorganic forces inherent in them, all the species. 
and forms, all the grades and orders, all the depend- 
encies and interdependencies of the actual living 
universe spring. Science excludes and repudiates 
every other postulate or principle, and says: If 
these are not God, then there is no God, for there is 3 
no God but these; fizal causes, consequently, there 
are none in the universe, nor are any needed. The 
universe is what it is without design, and as the result 
of the unconscious blind force of inorganic, lifeless 
matter. 

Matter acting from its own inherent necessity of 
acting, and without any end in view, has produced 
this which we see, and are, and which we call the 
universe. The plain declaration of this so-called _ 
science is that in this—in this blind, unconscious 
force of hypothetical atoms—we have all that we 
want—all that reason can ask for in order to ac- 
count for the universe as it is. All that there is in 
the creation we have without any God, and without 
the necessity of presupposing the existence of any, 
except what is furnished us in this hypothesis of 
matter. This appears to be a fair statement of the 
position of science on this question, as represented 
by Prof. Tyndall and his school. | 

The position of religion, on the contrary, is that 


178 PHILOSOPHY OF 


the atoms, even admitting their existence (though of 
this Prof. Tyndall admits there is no evidence), are 
not sufficient to account for the facts in the case as 
both parties admit them to be. She insists that in 
order to account for the living creation a creative, 
intelligent, and benevolent principle is required ; 
that nothing short of such a principle can account, 
for the facts as we find them, for the creation as 
it is. 

The first principle must, as is agreed on all hands, 
be a creative and producing power; whether volun- 
tarily or consciously or not, it must be producing ; 
and must produce from itself, and be self-moved in 
production. Science, according to Prof. T., claims 
that the atoms are such a principle; that out of the 
inherent forces and tendencies wrapped up in them, 
and constituting their nature and substance, all the 
forms and species of living beings spring forth as 
spontaneous and necessary productions. Spontane- 
ity, necessary self-activity, and self-existence it 
must ascribe to these atoms if they are ultimate, as 
they are claimed to be;in the creation, andgazs 
things were made by them, and without them was not 
anything made that was made, and they are to have 
the place in the atheistic cosmogony which the 
Eternal Word has in the Christian. 

But intelligent and self-conscious design in acting 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 179 


it denies to them. In other words, it assigns to the 
creation these atoms as its moving or producing 
cause, but denies to it any such thing as a final 
cause altogether. 

But the facts of the creation imply, not a produc- 
ing cause merely, but a final cause also. To ac- 
count for the universe as it is, not a cause only but 
an intelligent and designing cause, is required; that 
is, a cause not only acting and producing, but act- 
ing and producing with intelligent and wise design. 
Moreover, to account for the universe as it is, not 
intelligence only, but benevolence also is required 
in the cause that produced it, and the effect of 
whose productive energy it is. _ 

For it is just as evident that- the design of the 
universe is a good design, that is, a design prompted 
by infinite wisdom and goodness, as that there is 
any design in it at all, and design, that is, adapta- 
tion of means to ends in it, is just as evident as that 
it exists at all. So that the wisdom and ‘benevo- 
lence are just as manifest as the power and the 
intelligence. The atoms, therefore, being merely 
blind force, do not account for the facts. He does 
not deny, he doubtless admits, the evidence of intel- 
ligence, or of something looking like, and suggest- 
ing intelligence, and of something looking like an 
all-wise and benevolent end in the creation, and yet 


180 PHILOSOPHY OF 


he insists that there is in reality no such thing, but 
that the whole is sprung out of a force to which no 
such attributes as wisdom or benevolence can be 
ascribed. 

It is a gross absurdity. If science, as antagonistic 
to religion, has nothing better than this to offer, it 
had better give up the contest, or else be, for the 
present, a little more modest in its pretensions. 

I do not think that intelligent Christians them- 
selves are generally aware of the strength of the 
argument on which their cause rests. I do not think 
they are aware how plainly and forcibly the Scrip- 
ture puts it. It is sometimes said, and too generally 
admitted, that the Scriptures have no philosophy of 
their own; that they deal mainly in general and 
arbitrary assertions and implications in the truth of 
which they require us to believe, asking no ques- 
tions as to the rational or philosophic grounds upon 
which they are based. But let us see what the 
Apostle John has to say upon this very subject. 
Let us see what his idea of God is. For plainly he 
has an idea of him, and does not hesitate in very 
plain and positive terms to declare what it is. And 
let us see whether there be philosophy, or mere 
vague implication and assertion in his position, or 
not. It seems to me that there is not only philoso- 


phy but argument in it; argument addressed to the 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. ISI 


reason as well as the religion‘of man. He says ¢hat 
God ts love, and that he that dwelleth in love dwelleth 
an God, and God in Him! What is that but plainly 
and unequivocally declaring that love is God? We 
put it, then, to the Professor and his school: Do 
you deny the reality in human experience of any 
such thing as the love of which the Apostle here 
speaks, and which he says is God? Do you deny 
that love in the broad and fundamental sense in 
which John uses the word is an essential element in 
the life of the soul? If you believe in any such 
thing as the life of the soul in distinction from that. 
of the body you must believe that that life has ele- 
ments, and that love is one of them, and the most 
fundamental one. 

Now, then, it remains only to ask for a definition 
of love. We have seen that it exists as an element 
of human consciousness and experience. That it is 
no hypothesis, but a fact, lying, not on the “ other,” 
but on ¢hzs, side ‘‘the line of experimental evi- 


, 


dence,” and strictly within the legitimate domain of 
experience and science. We ask, then, in regard to 
it, Is it not a cause, a principle, a force in life, and 
in character, and wherever it appears? And is it 
not more than this? Is it not also an intelligent 
and benevolent cause or force? You will admit that 


love exists, and that where it exists it involves these 


182 PHILOSOPHY OF 


elements: productive force, intelligence, and a de- 
sign of good, in all that it does; that there cannot be . - 
such a thing as a love that is without productive, self- 
active force, unintelligent or malevolent. An inert, 
unintelligent, or malevolent love is simply a contra- 
diction in terms. That which knows nothing and 
does nothing and designs nothing can have no will 
of its own, and can therefore be neither benevolent or 
malevolent—can wish or design neither that which 
is good nor that which is evil. Love, if it means 
anything, means good-will, acting freely with a wise 
and intelligent design. Now the apostle says, that 
he that dwells in that principle, that is, the man 
who, in all that he does, is actuated by it, dwells in 
God and God in him, and thus he makes and in- 
tends to make love to be but another term for God. 
We have only to endow love thus understood with 
infinite attributes and place it at the head of the 
creation as its producing and final cause, to have the 
Christian idea of God. According to the philosophy 
of Christianity, therefore, as expounded by the 
Apostle John, not only is God infinite and eternal 
love, but infinite and eternal love is God. He that 
denies the existence of the God of Christianity, de- 
nies that there is any such thing as this love, and 
claims that he can account for all the life and all 


the good there is in the universe, all the harmony, 


TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. 183 


and all the beauty, all the happiness that sentient 
and intelligent creatures enjoy, without supposing 

love to have anything at all to do with the work of 
creation. 

He claims that a producing cause, without any 
love, or intelligence, or life in it is sufficient to ac- 
count for all the life, all the love, all the well-being, 
and all the happiness there is in the universe. This 
is the sublime conclusion to which science, divorced 
from religion, has at last come. This we are told is 
the last and greatest of its achievements thus far. 
What may we not expect that it will do in the 
future! To sum up in one word, the Christian phi- 
losophy makes love to bé the origin of the creation, 
and says that all things were made by it, and that with- 
out it was not anything made that was made. The 
infidel philosophy enthrones matter, and makes all 
the life, and all the love, and all the mind there is 
in the universe the product of that. The one says 
fove, the other says matter, is God. 


a) lem? 
“ot 


Oy “abo be 
pe ie 


0 ea 2 


—_ 


im > a! Dt « Pntd ; - . j 7 .” . F : When ~* ¢ = ~ =H) 
Pgh lee, ec a Ie t yan ieee oy gee net sae SUS gk ih any ee vc. = ee J 
a . 7 cs e — : 7 i, ad 1 — in < “ ~ ‘ _— oD 
. Deak >". - . ; - - ee t : - . aaa aay +. om nied Fe 
Bete act Ste = + a fie hme eee we tee OS - 
; een ee F ; ee cp eo : I ee oa a 5). SPP oy Jae re ‘e= 
‘ : ete Aa ee : eae ao: nf ern : ee CPs ta 
M4 iS - . ; es a 7 P me 7 a Ps » ¢ 
2 “ k= « — - may < Segre ™ fe of dens HE O—iin 5 Pine 3 >. ay 
* 3 ‘ me o <A « , =o ; 
- pres ee a 6c a 2} eke Ge 
Fy; a . : sa > an - 4 & i ote — i A oO te 
= oe = * *? - ms lle: bed ~~ 
a a * ~ ; - 4 aa " 
wot ene ie ' Ps 5 mY hy — = ——< oe <a 
ot * ¥ : a % v 2 ss - « : “ t ae 7 i“ wa » 
os ° is " 4 _ a .- ‘~~ ‘5 on ans Pt | ry 
oa - - @ , 
- » < nd a ag > aa 
a ea “ ‘ , oD aa * ty = fo 
a s . oe et fs 
i? 2 < a * < é < OF a . - wos << e eh * 
; ; . » J a te se a= 
T ae : é is te e . . aes 7 w% ; «a A = i 
ES x4 ; : eS : . . hey cea 
" — ~ a < » = o 7 4 * +m, 
p> ad = a “ © - = bd : al 
- * - 6+ ~T «- iv — a >. 


AS 
, ie 1 aa Bone = 


= SW SSK SAN SS WRN 
Iwo, one oo 
KW. 0 \ 
MRS WSS gunn 
AS QV A \ WA 
MV KK . 


RMAVSVagg 

SS RAG SS 
\\ WN 
xe 


ss 
RMA AN AK 
WS SQ QA 
. RSV °72wwooo 
WIAA Q MR Vow QQw 
XX Wh AK WS 
SS SA NS 
SAN 
RAS 
SN 


